Experts from around the world tackled the issue of pervasive doping in sports last week in a half-day seminar held at Pepperdine University’s School of Law.
Speakers, who included Olympic gold medalists, investigative reporters and heralded doctors, discussed the origin of doping in sports, the present and future of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), and tried to answer why serial dopers such as Lance Armstrong were never caught.
While testing measures have improved and penalties have gotten stiffer, athletes continue to use PEDs for one simple reason.
“The drugs work and they are effective, that’s why people take them,” said Mark Fainaru-Wada, an investigative reporter who co-authored the book “Game of Shadows,” the story of baseball’s BALCO scandal. “If the thought is that these drugs are going to enhance your performance, then they will enhance your ability to win and succeed; at the professional level they enhance your ability to make more money.”
Keynote speaker Dr. Arne Ljungqvist, a high-jump competitor at the 1952 Olympic games and a pioneer of the anti-doping movement, said doping first began to seriously worry Olympic officials in the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea. Sprinter Ben Johnson won the gold medal in the 100-meter dash, but was disqualified after testing positive for a performance-enhancing substance.
“After Johnson took the gold and broke world records, and later tested positive, Olympic officials began to see something was wrong: Sport is at risk,” Ljungqvist said.
While the 1988 incident shocked the world, the practice was not new. Doping is a horseracing term that can be traced back to the early 1900s. Ljungvist said humans likely began doping in the 1950s and ’60s, though he did not know of any users when he competed.
During the 1960 Olympics in Rome, the first worldwide-televised summer games, a cyclist collapsed and died on live television. The autopsy later revealed trace amounts of several drugs, including amphetamine. The following year, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided to compose a medical commission, the sole task being to decide a strategy to combat the use of drugs in Olympic Sports.
“To see an Olympian die right in the living rooms of people around the world was a bit too much for the IOC,” Dr. Ljungqvist said.
The first large-scale testing program was implemented at the 1972 Summer Olympics held in Munich, and about 50 percent of the athletes that were tested showed positive for mostly stimulants and amphetamines; no other compounds were found. In the same year, Dr. Ljungqvist joined the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) and began the practice of year-round monitoring of drugs in its athletes.
Soon, anabolic steroids began to be the most popular drug being found in samples taken from athletes. At the 1976 Olympic games, six weightlifters and one track and field athlete tested positive for steroids.
Johnson’s positive test in 1988 was followed by the steroids era in baseball and increasing use in track and cycling. In 1999, the World Anti-Doping Association (WADA) was created to promote, monitor and coordinate the fight against doping in sports. The organization is responsible for the World Anti- Doping Code, which has been adopted by more than 600 sports organizations, including the IOC.
“Athletes are open to the testing, because most athletes don’t dope,” Dr. Ljungqvist argued. “It is difficult for an athlete today to dope.”
Several attendees acknowledged, however, that the game of cat and mouse between athletes that dope and testing officials still happens today.
“People want to know why these testing programs aren’t catching many cheats,” said Dr. Don Catlin. “I want to know why after working in my lab for 30 years why I couldn’t catch Lance Armstrong, it took somebody else to do it.”
Others were skeptical any lab could catch someone willing to break the rules.
“The cheaters have been ahead of the testers forever; if you’re looking for a way to cheat, guys will find that way,” Fainaru-Wada said. “It will take a major change rooted in penalties going through the roof or major advancements in science.”
While testing of athletes may not have stopped those from doping all together, Dr. Ljungqvist insists it is needed.
“There will always be those who try to cheat,” Dr. Ljungqvist said. “To me, winning the fight against doping is to get doping under such reasonable control that people feel pretty safe that they are not competing against drug takers.”