The history of doping

Doping - it's drugs, which are used by athletes to artificial, forced improve performance during the training process and competitive activities. Depending on the sport, they may have very different and even opposite pharmacological actions from psychostimulant to tranquilizing, diuretic to cardiotropic of influence.

According to historians, the use of doping by athletes - this is not news. And it is not a modern problem. It turns out that even 300-400 years ago, African tribes found that if you rub the body extracts of certain plants, a person falls into the excited state, it increases efficiency, reduces the feeling of fear. According to the Spanish medieval chronicles, the Maya and Aztecs widely used natural stimulators - to raise the morale of the soldiers. The ancient Japanese chronicles also mention the clandestine drugs used by samurai to defeat enemies.

At the Olympic Games in ancient Greece doping has already been used. There were special herbal tinctures and so much more - sesame seeds, certain types of psychotropic mushrooms. The Romans were very fond of fluster, gladiators feed to show in their performance was even more exciting, dramatic.

In the Middle Ages Norman warriors ate intoxicating mushroom extract before the battle and some other psychotropic mushrooms, which led them to a state of aggressiveness and made insensitive to pain and fatigue.

By the time the first modern Olympic Games, that held in 1896, the athletes had a sufficiently broad arsenal of pharmacological support of codeine to strychnine (in about lethal doses it is a powerful stimulant). However, in most cases, athletes are actually blindly put on oneself experiments, which sometimes can end in tears for them.

A prime example of the use of doping is the story of the American Thomas Hicks, marathon runners. At the competition in St. Louis in 1904. Hicks was ahead of its rivals for several kilometers. Not having reached almost 20 km, he lost consciousness. Coaches poured him some drug, then Hicks continued running. After a few kilometers the history has repeated he again fell unconscious, he poured the drug and he got up, ran again. As a result, he completed a marathon and won a gold medal. Later we found out that Hicks drank the drink, filled with strychnine.

Deaths of professional athletes, that often happened directly during the events, were a direct reason for a declaration of war doping.

Obvious seemed and control measures. Doping of the era - amphetamine, ephedrine, and the like - in fact, were quick stimulants, which had to be taken immediately before the performance. They are not synthesized in the body and could get it only from the outside. And so it was enough to develop a reliable and not too painful to test their determination and mandatory testing in senior competitions. However, it soon became clear that many stimulants are part of a very common OTC drugs - for example, the same ephedrine was widely used in mixtures for inhalation, used against the common cold.

The real beginning of the modern era of doping should be considered in 1935, when the injectable testosterone was created. First used by Nazi doctors to increase the aggressiveness of the soldiers, and later he confidently entered the sport with athletes in Germany in 1936 at the Berlin Olympics, and then, after the Second World War was used extensively in the preparation of the USSR national team to participate in the Olympic Games of 1952 .

The stunning success of the Soviet national team became a complete surprise for opponents. However, it soon became clear that the "magic", as it seemed at first, means there had serious side effects. The leading pharmaceutical laboratories and institutes have begun the search for solutions to this problem.

Soon pharmacologists efforts were rewarded: already in 1955, first appeared on the market with increased steroid anabolic properties - Dianabol (mildronate). In sports practice preparation "Dianabol" is the first of a series of specially designed anabolic steroid with low androgenic activity, was applied to American physician John Ziegler in 1958. Since then, a new era in the use of performance enhancing drugs - anabolic steroids era. Steroids began to spread like a plague.

By the early 1960s, according to one American football players, coaches filled with Dianabol salad bowls and put them on the table. Athletes taking handfuls of pills and seized them with bread. They called it the "breakfast of champions." About the same recall and Soviet athletes. Sometimes the number of pills, for example Retabolilum (a drug used for the recovery of the body), is over a twenty pieces a day, though the therapeutic dose of the drug for muscle recovery after injury is three to four tablets per day.

No need to take the drug in the competitive period, and therefore reduce the likelihood of being caught in the doping admission, a significant increase in muscle mass and strength in the short term and the total lack of information about the possible consequences of taking steroid hormones, anabolic steroids have turned into the uncrowned king of doping agents of the XX century.

In place of the biochemical "whip and spurs" (whipped body, but did not give the real additional resources to it) will soon come long acting formulations are often identical to natural physiological regulators - hormones - or created on their basis. Such, for example, the fashion today erythropoietin - a natural hormone that stimulates the maturation of red blood cells - red blood cells. More of the hormone - more red blood cells, is active in the transport of oxygen. This provides significant advantages, especially in "stayer" disciplines requiring endurance, in which erythropoietin is usually used.

Such doping, of course, is far less harmful than "fast" stimulants, although talking about their complete security is not necessary. The same erythropoietin already was involved in the history of fatalities: an increase in the number of red blood cells at a constant volume of blood increases the viscosity of the latter, and an increased burden on the heart. Therefore, the "correct" use of doping comprises administering additional drugs that increase the volume of blood plasma, on which athletes frequently catch violators.

Doping of new generation differs from its predecessors by the fact that they were much more difficult to detect. First, the desired substance is present in any known organism. To judge that part of it brought in from outside, or is the result of artificial stimulation, it can be only an unusually high concentration and disruption of some biochemical proportions - and different people have different physiological characteristics very strongly. Second, the effect of the use of these drugs is preserved even after many days (or even weeks) after the termination of their admission.

If you stop taking steroids, then at least the withdrawal from the body of excess and stop muscle growth - but long muscles will stay on our laurels for the reception level of the hormone, regularly showing high results. Since the timing of major events is always known in advance, a qualified medic can calculate the course of steroids so that the "window" (the period when the excess of the hormone in the body is already there, and a decrease in muscle mass has not yet begun) had on them.

And before competition is the athlete's doping nobody checks.

However, to the wonders of "great chemistry" while athletes and sports doctors treated carefully - precisely because of their foreignness in the body, makes it relatively easy to detect them. Much more widespread are relatively simple and "natural" stimulants.

These include insulin (or even just the glucose introduced into the blood directly before the start or play), an extract of the placenta, and even blood transfusions "from him - themselves": the athlete previously losing a certain amount of blood, it by means of special funds remain unchanged and just before the start of the competition is pumped back to "owner." A women's team coaches have found even more sophisticated tool to improve the results of their charges: it turned out that in the early stages of pregnancy women's physical capabilities significantly increase. Sportswoman of the task was time to get pregnant, go to start on top form, and immediately after the event to have an abortion.

Not surprisingly, for some time, the anti-doping world sports services were helpless in front of this avalanche.

After the unification of West and East Germany into a single German state in the archives of the East German Secret Police "Stasi" revealed details about the long-term large-scale use of performance-enhancing drugs by athletes of the GDR. Sports history of the GDR - a history of forced doping. Its effects become severe disease - infertility, liver cirrhosis, heart failure, cancer.

German historian Gizelher Spitzer, engaged in the study of the state system of compulsory use of doping in the GDR sports officials found documents that carefully recorded the names of athletes, coaches and doctors, as well as the dose of drugs. Documents show that from the beginning of the 70s of the twentieth century in the GDR there was a program on the use of forced doping.

For its performance posted coaching staff and party functionaries. In addition, the athletes watched by more than 3,000 employees of unofficial "Stasi". Victims of forced doping program began more than 15 thousand athletes. Typically, anabolic steroids and stimulants athletes received under the guise of "maintenance drugs."

As you know, Soviet athletes started to use doping in the training process in the early 50-ies of the last century. In many respects it was conditioned by political reasons. As a result of the confrontation of two systems - socialism and capitalism - a demonstration of the advantages of a system required a preponderance of the evidence. To achieve the goal the quickest and most effective way was chosen Doping.

In 1972 it released a document "for official use only" entitled "Anabolic steroids and sports performance". It provides accurate descriptions of dosages of anabolic agents and Nerobolum Retabolilum, which in combination with precisely calculated timing effects result in increased muscle mass, improved recovery processes and increase the body's endurance.

Today, in the world yearly are synthesized thousands of new drugs. Most of the commercialized and misses, as a rule, because of the high cost of a potentially negative impact on the human body.

But in most developed countries began to emerge laboratories engaged in synthesis of small amounts of anabolic steroids or rejected by the pharmaceutical industry, or newly created. The purpose of such laboratories - meet the needs of the leading athletes in the most prestigious Olympic sports - athletics and swimming.

US market turnover of anabolic steroids and prohormones exceeded one billion dollars. All kinds of the latest in the US legally available under a variety of dietary supplements or "supplements", and no prescription is required to buy them. 60 - 70% of synthetic growth hormone and erythropoietin buy competitors.

Now begins a new round of the race: barely control services have found a more or less acceptable answers to the "hormonal" and "blood" calls as there was talk of "gene doping".