Last October Preston Davis (U. of Texas) sent me this first news piece (below) from India. Took me a long time to get it on the blog, Preston, but I hope it was worth the wait. Wow, India has arrived in the doping market of track and field. Once it was mainly East Germany and American throwers who garnered all the attention. I'm also reminded personally of an encounter in 1970 with members of a Special Forces A Team in England and their mentioning that they used 'stimulants' when going into the field. The British equivalent lads Special Air Services (SAS) were a bit taken aback when they heard this from our guys. To confirm the Green Beanies' statement, I found this article online from The Lancet Use of Amphetamines in the Military (Note: It looks like Chrome or Google wants to block this. Just type Use of Stimulants in the Military by Eric A. Bower into your URL and the article may come up. It reports that stimulants were used by US military as far back as WWII and still are used. I also decided to look back into old newspapers 1890 to 1914 to see what was being mentioned on the subject as regards sport. There were numerous articles from 1900 on talking about administering strychnine, cocaine, and oxygen as stimulants to performance in running as well as swimming. The idea seems to have come from horseracing where a bit of money could be made from not very sophisticated drug abuse on the horses, not the jockeys. Maybe even Phidippides was getting hits of ouzo from grateful peasants while on his way to declare the Greek victory at Marathon. One article on performance enhancement regarding the design of the swimming suit sounds like the description of the advantage of the latest running shoes. Today's shoe marketing stammer could easily have been lifted from this particular article. I've posted a number of those stories from places as remote as New Zealand and as close to home as Omaha. There were rules listed formally banning stimulants at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, this being one of the first official bans on chemical assistance in sport. It really worked, didn't it? Makes for some interesting reading if you have the time. George
From Preston Davis: Wild story out of India, where most athletes disappeared from a state track meet after doping officials showed up. November, 2023
"The final day of the Delhi State Athletics Championship … at the warm-up track of the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in the national capital, turned into a cat-and-mouse game between athletes and doping control officers on Tuesday."
"The number of participants fell by half as news spread that National Anti Doping Agency (NADA) officials had dropped in, a day after a purported video clip of the washroom at the stadium showed piles of used syringes."
This is nuts: Only one person ran the men's 100m final after seven others withdrew, citing cramps or muscle strains. In the steeplechase, one athlete kept running after crossing the finish line to evade testing.
The big picture: Doping is a serious problem in India, which ranked second behind Russia in violations per a recent World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)
Here are those news stories from the distant past
This one first got my attention. It is from our youth when the world was still an innocent place. At least I thought it was. I love the term "Pep Up Pills", it just sounds so naive in today's lingo. Something out of James Dean's "Rebel Without a Cause" or Brando's "The Wild One".
From L. A. Mirror June 6, 1957
The Omaha Daily Bee May 30, 1909
Washington Post August 16, 1914
The Montreal Star December 7, 1907
Possibly the World's First Doping Poem in The L.A. Herald August 29, 1909
from The Evening Star (New Zealand) April 3, 1901
The article appeared in numerous journals around the British Empire
The Alameda Times September 7, 1908
Doping with Oxygen, Gambling, Heaven Forbid, and Fast Gear
We're Gonna Fix This Thing For Good in Stockholm
Also several interesting Track and Field Rule Changes
Running Against The Sun?
Doping is overwhelming but I did not realize its beginnings as far back as 1909. I will simply trust the anti-doping organizations to weed out the abusers who are always ahead of the enforcers. Sometimes the question is which drugs are legal and which are not since they all get the athlete to a better place. I can honestly say none of my marks were aided by drugs, even Coca Cola. Bill Schnier
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