Anabolic Athletics
A Brief History of Drugs in Sport
by
Charlie Francis
Anavar or Alien Athletes?
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is flushed with victory after
catching their first group of athletes for blood doping offenses 31 years after
they invented the practice of testing. (Actually, the Finnish athletes were
caught because their coach dropped a suitcase out of his car at a gas station
that was filled with drugs. Whoops!) WADA president, Dick Pound, crowed,
"Athletes who compete clean should be able to do so with the confidence
that cheaters will be caught and dealt with accordingly."
Yes, this is the same Dick Pound who is vice president of the
International Olympic Committee (IOC). The IOC keeps WADA under its wing to
ensure that this "independent" doping agency is run with the
integrity the IOC is famous for. But who is Pound talking to? And now that the
IOC has added marijuana to its banned list, what’s he smoking?
It’s now a matter of record that the systematic use of performance
enhancing drugs in sport for more than 50 years has punted performance
standards clear out of sight, so far out of sight that no human can attain them
without chemical assistance. The magnitude of the benefit available from drugs
was suggested in a secret East German report compiled by the STASI (secret
police) in 1968, long before doping expertise reached its peak. In this report,
Dr. Manfred Hoeppner, East Germany’s Chief Medical Officer, recommended the
universal administration of steroids to East German athletes. Over the next 20
years, the drug-fueled East Germans wrought havoc upon the record books.
How then have performances continued to improve — even beyond East
German standards — since the fall of Communism, if sport has been cleaned up? Either
the vast majority of top athletes must not be clean, or they must not be human.
Fear not! WADA will protect these superior alien beings from the occasional
doped-up earthling!
WADA may appear to be preaching to athletes, but its message of ethics
and purity is really aimed at reassuring an uninformed audience to protect
broadcast and sponsorship dollars. Extraterrestrial fantasies aside, the
athletes are firmly rooted on Terra Firma and, though they can’t admit it, they
know the message is bullshit. Read on and you’ll know it too!
The History of Drugs in Competition
Whenever winning has mattered, athletes have sought an edge over their
rivals, making the marriage between drugs and competition as old as sport
itself. Attempts to boost Testosterone were already being recorded by 776 BC,
when Olympic athletes ingested sheep’s testicles — a prime source of
Testosterone. Athletes of antiquity used cola plants, hashish, cactus-based
stimulants, Amanita muscaria (a fungus), and an assortment of other rudimentary
ergogenics with varying degrees of success.
The first documented modern case of doping surfaced in 1865 with Dutch
swimmers using stimulants. By the late 19th century, European cyclists were
drugging themselves with a variety of "miracle" products, from
caffeine and ether-coated sugar cubes to Vin Mariani, a compound of wine laced
with cocaine, to allay the pain and exhaustion endemic to their sport.
By the time of the first modern Olympics in 1896, a broad array of
performance aids were in currency, from codeine to strychnine (which is a
powerful stimulant in sub-lethal doses.) In the 1904 Olympics, American
marathon winner Thomas Hicks had to be revived by four physicians after
ingesting brandy laced with cocaine and strychnine. He still got his gold
medal, of course.
By 1932, sprinters were experimenting with nitroglycerine in an effort
to dilate their coronary arteries and later began experimenting with
Benzidrine. But the real modern doping era started with the introduction of
injectable Testosterone in 1935. Developed by Nazi doctors to promote
aggression in their troops, Testosterone found its way onto the athletic field
with Germany’s Olympic team for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Olympic winners had
used oral Testosterone preparations before — notably Paavo Nurmi with a product
called Rejuvin during the 1920’s — but this was a quantum leap and, contrary to
the legend of Jesse Owens, the Germans did win the overall medal count that
year.
After the war, the Russians put their captured German scientists to work
doping their athletes with the intention of making a political statement
through their athletic success on the international stage. This happened in
spades when the Soviets made their Olympic debut in Helsinki in 1952. The
sudden and completely unexpected success of the Soviet team (and piles of
discarded syringes in the dressing rooms) raised a lot of eyebrows,
particularly in America, which had its own collection of captured German
scientists. The first shots of the athletic cold war had been fired.
Soon, American athletes were using injectable Testosterone and discovering its limitations. Testosterone
has equal amounts of anabolic and androgenic activity, meaning that to increase
the amount of anabolic effect, androgenic side effects had to be tolerated,
among them virilization in females and prostate problems in males. Something
better was needed to raise the performance bar to the next level. American
ingenuity was up to the task.
The Anabolic Age — Breakfast of Champions
In 1955, John Ziegler, the physician for the US weightlifting team,
developed a modified synthetic Testosterone molecule with enhanced tissue
building properties. This was the first manmade anabolic steroid. Its chemical
name was methandrostenolone; its trade name was Dianabol. Most know it these days
as D-bol.
Developed by Ciba Pharmaceuticals, Dianabol soon became widely available
and indispensable to weightlifters, football players, and track and field
athletes. It spurred protein synthesis and helped muscles to regenerate quickly
from the stress of training. And for sprint and power athletes, the drug
excited the muscle motor neurons, resulting in more powerful muscle
contractions, which is the foundation for higher speed and improved reaction
times.
By the early 1960s, according to one NFL player, coaches would place
salad bowls full of the tablets on the training tables. Players would scoop out
pills by the handful and sprinkle them on their cereal. They called it
"the breakfast of champions."
The Pandemic — 1968
The word was out and steroids were spreading fast. They were turning up
on the training tables of athletes all over the world. 1968 was the watershed
year for East Germany in the steroid sweepstakes with the creation of the most
comprehensive, state run doping program ever devised.
That same year, two Olympians, who had enjoyed unexpected success at the
1964 Tokyo Games, arrived at the US Olympic training camp in South Lake Tahoe
with a mission. With evangelical zeal, they told everyone who would listen
about the benefits of steroids and were quick to attribute their success to
Dianabol. Many team members were convinced to start a cycle then and there,
although this may have been a case of preaching to the choir.
Interestingly, 1968 was the first time an official complaint about
steroids was being heard. This complaint wasn’t made by sports authorities, but
by the World Health Organization. Apparently steroids were being dumped in some
third world countries with a kickback volume incentive for doctors. The doctors
became quite creative in finding reasons to prescribe steroids, citing
everything from malnutrition to menstrual cramps. Coincidentally, the two main
countries cited in the report were Kenya and Jamaica, countries that burst into
prominence at the 1968 Olympics.
Break the Rules or Lose
Born out of the misguided notion that it was possible to restore a
drug-free playing field when, in fact, one never existed, testing soon evolved
from idealism to cynicism. Drugs had no ethical disposition; they were no more
disdained than spiked shoes or rubber tracks. They became unethical only after
they were banned.
The testers lobbied for a ban, citing ethics, then stepped forward to
"solve" the problem they had only just created. They added nothing,
generated no result, helped no athlete, yet they attached themselves,
limpet-like, to the body of sport. Greatness is an all-out pursuit. Athletes
who seek it have always known they couldn’t afford to say, "So far and no
farther." Now these athletes faced a dilemma: break the rules or lose.
Ironically, drug testing was introduced at the Olympic level in 1968,
just as the drug pandemic exploded. Even though the initial tests in Mexico
City were superficial and inconclusive, the testers were already declaring
victory. And they were right, since their objective was to institutionalize
themselves!
At the 1972 Munich Olympics, they caught their first big fish, American
swimmer Rick De Mont, for ephedrine. How proud they were! Now they were really
making progress, saving the Olympic ethos from a dirty cheat like De Mont. Of
course, it turns out he was an asthmatic and had a medical certificate for the
medication. But, alas, his paperwork went missing. Now, 29 years later, sport
authorities have grudgingly admitted their mistake. Sorry Rick!
There was no turning back. The testers were in there now and they were
coming after steroids.
Gold Medal "Recipes"
In the race for anabolic supremacy, research was ongoing throughout the
world to develop the best method to utilize steroids. Russian research, based
on rat studies, concluded that the most effective dose of Dianabol was .5mg per
kilo of bodyweight. Thus Russian sprinters began using approximately 35 mg per
day for prolonged periods. This led to the discovery of a new phenomenon called
receptor downgrade. Eventually, the body rebels against a continuous
over-stimulation of the receptor sites and begins to shut down some of them in
an attempt to regain homeostasis (its normal state).
In order to maintain the same level of stimulation, it was necessary to
either increase the dose continuously until side effects established a dosage
ceiling, interrupt the drug protocol (making training adjustments necessary),
or to change the drug or add drugs to maintain receptor affinity. The Russians
never really got a handle on this problem and adopted the concept of "key
performance years," sometimes taking one or two years off drugs (with the
resulting performance drop) in order to have a big year when it counted.
I remember a conversation with Juri Sedych, the world record holder in
the hammer, when he found out about the Olympic boycott of 1984. "I took
all of 1983 off drugs and got my ass kicked at the World Championships just to
be ready for the Olympics, and now this!" Sedych broke the world record
several times in 1984 but didn’t get the big win he was looking for.
The East Germans approached the problem very differently. They developed
a protocol based on the administration of 0.125 mg of Turinabol (an East German
variant of Dianabol) per kilo of lean body mass. Their optimal dose was much
smaller than the Russian dose and was implemented progressively over a number
of years. In addition, they cycled the administration of the drug in order to
preserve receptor affinity.
The typical sprint protocol consisted of five blocks of administration
annually. The first cycle started in November and ran for four weeks, followed
by a two week break. The second cycle started in mid-December and ran for six
weeks, followed by a four week indoor competition period in February. The third
cycle started March 1st and ran for four weeks, followed by another
two week break.
The fourth cycle, also of four weeks, led into the first outdoor
competition period which ran from mid-May to mid-June. The fifth and final
cycle lasted six weeks and led to the main competition period of the year in
August. If the main competition occurred at a different time, the entire season
was adjusted accordingly.
This system gave a total administration period of 24 weeks with the rest
of the year off. The dosage progressed throughout the year with the peak dose
occurring during the final six-week block. As the doctors never determined an
optimal time of day for steroids, they administered partial doses throughout
the day to maintain an even level. This system maintained receptor affinity
and, through a gradual increase in dosage, allowed top performances year after
year.
The maximum state-sanctioned dose recorded in the STASI files for a
female sprinter was 1650 mg per year, an average of 9.8 mg/day during the
administration period or, viewed another way, an average of 4.5 mg/day over the
whole year. The maximum dose recorded for a male sprinter was 1850 mg/year, an
average of 11 mg/day during the administration period, or an average of 5
mg/day over the whole year. While trivial by bodybuilding standards, it sure
got the job done!
The Arrival of Growth Hormone
By the mid-1970’s a new drug was introduced in East Germany — growth
hormone. Most of the information from this period was purged from the STASI
files so little is known of the administration protocol, but obviously
something went wrong since they stopped using it in 1982 and covered their
tracks by destroying the files after the collapse of Communism.
Dr. Hartmut Hommel, the personal physician of Marita Koch, the 400 meter
world record holder, acknowledged that GH had been used before 1982, but had
few details as he’d been in jail for "political crimes" until then. Upon
his release, he was assigned to medical duties with the Track and Field
Association and the first memo to cross his desk was a curt notice,
"Growth hormone will no longer be used."
He later discovered that the GH being used wasn’t from humans, but
rather from pigs! Apparently, the East German authorities couldn’t come up with
the Western currency to buy the human source GH, then made in Sweden. In any
case, results improved substantially without this GH!
Dr. Hommel pointed out the difficulty in getting the real picture of
drug use in East Germany. Although he was the personal physician to Marita Koch,
assigned by the federation, he had no control over her drug program. Marita was
already on record with complaints about her drug protocol. In 1981, she wrote
to the STASI to complain because she believed that her main East German rival,
Barbel Wockel, was getting more and better drugs because Barbel’s uncle was the
president of JEV Jenapharm, the company that manufactured East Germany’s
steroids!
Baritones in the Pool
Not all of East Germany’s drug programs ran as smoothly as the track and
field protocol. With the swim team, Testosterone remained the drug of choice
leading up to the 1976 Olympics. Side effects were becoming obvious with the
women swimmers, especially their deep voices. When confronted by the media
about the voice changes, the head swim coach replied, "Hey, we’re here to
win a swim meet, not to sing!"
Of course, the cat was out of the bag after that and others would be
free to copy their methods. The swim federation’s medical staff decided to take
the drug program to another level for the 1978 World Championships. Testosterone
was replaced with an esoteric cocktail of hormones. The swim team, which had
been all-conquering in 1976, was wiped out at the Worlds. The East Germans
fired the medical staff and returned to the basics.
World Champions… of Doping
"The Russians know a few drugs, the East Germans know a few more,
but the Americans are the World Champions of Doping!" This memorable quote
came from Manfred Donike, the former director of the testing lab in Cologne and
IOC Medical Commissioner. An audacious statement, given the IOC’s woeful record
of catching American offenders, for if testing worked, where were the positive
tests to substantiate it? Or was it precisely the lack of positive tests amidst a blizzard of spectacular performances
that impressed Donike? In any event, on the anabolic front, everyone now agrees
that America was "firstest" with the "mostest."
By the 1960’s a wide variety of anabolic compounds had become available
and Americans were the first to experiment with combinations or
"stacks" of drugs. Of course, the first to be stacked were the first
they had — Dianabol and Testosterone. A wide range of synergistic
"stacks" soon emerged — Winstrol and Maxibolin, Dianabol and Anavar,
Nandrolone mixed with Primobolan and Testosterone, and so on.
While the combinations were being perfected, the dosages were rising
exponentially. The Russian experience with Dianabol was being translated for
the American audience, only someone forgot a decimal point. The 0.5 mg/kg
dosage described in the Russian articles became 5 mg/kg for the American
audience!
The American women were beginning to catch up in the anabolic
sweepstakes as well. By 1963, sprinters were already experimenting with
Dianabol. The West Coast protocol for women was "One a day, every
day." This meant 5 mg of D-bol every day between November 1st
and May 31st for a total annual dosage of 1060mg.
It all started at this seemingly reasonable level, but it didn’t stay
there for long! By 1984, one prominent group was using 15 mg/day of Dianabol,
10 mg/day of Anavar, 100 mg/wk of Testosterone, as well as GH and Thyroxin. The
annual dose for this group was approaching 8000 mg! Side effects started to
show up, ranging from thyroid disturbances to voice changes. One of the girls
phoned my top female sprinter to ask how she had avoided any voice changes. She
confided the protocol listed above to my sprinter. No wonder they were having
problems! They were using twelve times as much as we were!
Ben Gets Busted, or Does He?
Of course the most famous "success" for the drug testers was
the positive test on Ben Johnson in1988 at the Seoul Olympics. For those in the
know, this positive test led to more questions than answers. The accepted
clearance time for Winstrol in 1988 was three days for the oral form and 14
days for the injectable form (Winstrol-V or Strombaject). Ben was 28 days
clear, yet the parent compound was found. The parent compound has a life
expectancy of 45 minutes to one hour after administration! The testers have
claimed that Ben took it just before the race. I can state categorically, no he did not!
Be that as it may, that was then and this is now. The advances in
testing have made the threshold of detection ever lower, leading to current
clearance times ranging from 14 days for the oral form to as much as 13 months
for the injectable form.
Many attempts were made to continue the use of Winstrol-V after 1988. The
Russian and Ukrainian athletes tried to shorten the detection limit through IV
administration. This worked for a while until testing advances yielded a rash
of positives starting in 1993.
Americans Get "Educated"
In 1984, Americans were given access to the Los Angeles Lab, allegedly
to teach them the complexities of drug testing. Of course, since even a
chimpanzee can figure out how to piss in a bottle, there was another reason. The
embarrassment of having 24 Americans flee the 1983 Pan American Games to avoid
the new Testosterone test was not to be repeated at the Olympics.
Since losing wasn’t an option, the American athletes needed to know how
to get around the testing. They soon discovered that the LA lab could only find
oral anabolic agents in a lean individual within three days of administration,
provided the final few doses were dissolved under the tongue.
They also learned that Anavar was a giant loophole in the testing
equation as it couldn’t be found at all! In fact, it remained untestable until
1989! Even after it became detectable, it maintained a short clearance time
because it fractionated into many small metabolites. Currently it has a
clearance time of 10 to 14 days.
GH in the States
Just as growth hormone was being abandoned in East Germany, it began to
become popular in America. Initial experience was mixed. Although the GH used
in America was from human sources, the dosage was low due to very high cost and
limited availability. Most of the early use was by throwers who were used to
massive doses of steroids.
Two eager throwers went to a pediatrician to try to score a prescription
for some of the rare GH. The doctor became incensed, "Think of the poor
dwarf children who won’t get to grow because selfish athletes like you have
hogged the supply!" The throwers looked down, at a loss for words, until
one laughed and said, "Hell Doc, give ‘em some roids and turn ‘em on to
midget wrestling!" Not amused, the doctor showed them the door.
The development of Recombinant, Synthetic HGH in the mid-eighties led to
a tremendous increase in availability and a huge drop in price. In a sufficient
dosage, GH proved to be a powerful performance enhancer, especially when
combined with anabolic steroids and/or Testosterone.
Current protocols in the sprint world call for doses of GH on the order
of three to five units, usually administered at night, three times per week. It
was found that the effectiveness of GH was enhanced when the GH was injected
into the fat pad near the stomach. This caused the GH to be released over a
period of several hours rather than the 20 minute "window" provided
by an intramuscular shot.
Anabolic Advances
The proliferation of drugs continued as each advance in drug testing met
with evermore sophisticated protocols. Testosterone ratio tests were met with
the administration of Epitestosterone along with Testosterone to maintain an
acceptable ratio. Epitestosterone limits were met with the use of HCG to
restore natural T/E ratios. The inclusion of HCG on the banned list led to its
replacement by Clomid.
Frequent drug testing led to the use of the blocking agent Probenecid. The
banning of Probenecid led first to the use of another masking agent called
Defend, and then to the use of designer anabolic steroids, the state of the art
today. These designer drugs have their chemical structures modified in such a
way as to make them unidentifiable to the drug testers while maintaining their
performance enhancing qualities.
The first "designer drug" was, in fact, not a chemically
modified steroid, but rather a steroid with an effective dosage so low that the
clearance time was measured in hours instead of days or weeks. Up until 1992,
the clearance time for Mibolerone (also known as "Chek Drops") was
four hours! This was especially helpful for athletes subject to random testing,
since they could take it at night and refuse to answer the door till morning.
There were problems with this drug, however. Originally designed to put
cats and dogs into heat, it’s incredibly androgenic, and it shuts down the
body’s natural hormone production at an alarming rate. Ten days of use could
shut down the user’s hormone output by over 90%, leaving the athlete subject to
a performance crash after its withdrawal and, as Testosterone/Epitestosterone
production approaches zero, the T/E ratio may go haywire and cause a positive
Testosterone test. Advances in drug testing sensitivity rendered the drug less
interesting until a masked designer version became available six years ago.
Another unmodified drug that became widely used up to and during the
Sydney Olympics was Genabol. This drug was brought to the attention of the drug
testers in 1984, but as it wasn’t in commercial production, a test wasn’t
developed for it. Once athletes became aware of this loophole, a market quickly
developed for the drug.
In a review of the negative tests after the Sydney Olympics, the drug
testers saw a suspicious compound on many of their tests and began to
investigate. Some months later they identified the compound as Genabol. By the
time a test was developed, the word was out and the athletes moved on to newer
products.
Currently, clandestine labs are producing designer versions of known
anabolic compounds which are synergistic with other untestable agents such as
GH and EPO. Erythropoetin is naturally produced in the body to regulate the
production of hemoglobin, allowing victorious users to proclaim their drug-free
status in interviews while their less sophisticated competitors are still
gasping for breath.
To give you an idea of the scope of the drug use of top athletes today,
I’ll give you the protocol for one top sprint group, as revealed by a defector.
Interested athletes, please note that this program was for the year 2000 and
has no doubt been changed since.
The athletes were using a 12-week administration of Anavar and
Halotestin (administered transdermally) as well as GH (2.5 IU, 3x/week),
injections of ATP, AMP with embryonic calf cell preparation 3x/week, insulin
(1.5 IU up to 3x/week), as well as EPO. Yes, they even use EPO in the 100
meters!
The most prominent member of this group also uses a modified version of
Mibolerone right before his major races. I’m sure the testers will be on top of
the situation as usual. Though they can’t test him positive, they could provide
the starter with a bucket of cold water in case the Chek Drops have their
intended effect and this guy tries to mount one of his competitors in the set
position!
Conclusion
As you can see, drug use in sports has a long and grand tradition. As T-mag has suggested in the past, perhaps
we really should give out medals to the scientists assisting the athletes. That’ll
never happen of course, but make no mistake, the theme of modern sport
regarding drug use remains "business as usual."