Speaker 1: Glass.
Speaker 2: When I was in graduate school, I was trying to
Speaker 2: nail down a topic for my doctoral dissertation. At the
Speaker 2: same time, I had picked up endurance running as a hobby,
Speaker 2: and I went for a run with a men's team
Speaker 2: that I had known for about five minutes at this point,
Speaker 2: and one of these guys, like a mile like ten
Speaker 2: or something, handed me this gel and just said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: you should, you should take this. It'll make you it'll
Speaker 2: make you feel better. And I did, like total candy
Speaker 2: from a stranger mistake, and you know, within like a
Speaker 2: couple of miles, I think I was like on the
Speaker 2: side of the road, like regurgitating the gel. Afterwards, I
Speaker 2: was sort of reflecting on like, God, that was horrible,
Speaker 2: Like why on earth would I have taken something that
Speaker 2: some random person just handed me? And it got me
Speaker 2: thinking about, you know, what do runners, amateur athletes, competitive
Speaker 2: athletes understand about performance enhancement and substance use and the
Speaker 2: policies around it. And that sort of led me to
Speaker 2: my first study for my doctorate, looking at competitive runners
Speaker 2: in New York City and what they knew and understood
Speaker 2: about antidoping policy and how that impacted their choices.
Speaker 1: From Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts. I'm Chris Guymali. This is superhuman.
Speaker 1: If you've been following this series, you know, the Enhanced
Speaker 1: Games raises a question that sounds simple but turns out
Speaker 1: to be anything but what exactly is wrong with doping?
Speaker 1: To answer that, you need to understand how we got here,
Speaker 1: how a set of rules built around Victorian ideas of
Speaker 1: amateurism became the global anti doping system we have today.
Speaker 1: When we were researching, one name kept coming up as
Speaker 1: the person to talk to about the history of doping,
Speaker 1: someone who has spent her career studying exactly that, doctor
Speaker 1: April Henning, a professor at Harriet Watt University in Edinburgh.
Speaker 1: April walked me through a pretty fascinating and pretty surprising narrative,
Speaker 1: starting with the first modern Olympics to how we got
Speaker 1: to where we are today, somewhere between the strict but
Speaker 1: perhaps more often than not failing rules of the World
Speaker 1: Anti Doping Agency and the Enhance Games. This is going
Speaker 1: to sound like a big, all encompassing historical question, but
Speaker 1: you know, going back to antiquity, how long have athletes
Speaker 1: been doping for and what did it look like back then?
Speaker 2: So that is a great, big question. So what we
Speaker 2: know is that going back and everyone always starts with
Speaker 2: the original Greek Olympics and these things, and we do
Speaker 2: know that there is some evidence that they were using
Speaker 2: all sorts of things to enhance their performance. It was
Speaker 2: quite rudimentary at the time, but they were various forms
Speaker 2: of you know, mushroom or types of animal products that
Speaker 2: they were ingesting to, you know, try to improve their performance.
Speaker 2: So it does go back into antiquity. From there it
Speaker 2: sort of falls off. So the sort of competitive sport,
Speaker 2: as we understand that is really a fairly modern development.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't really until the end of the eighteen
Speaker 2: hundreds where we were seeing the development of sort of
Speaker 2: modern competitive sport and then the rise of doping for
Speaker 2: sport purposes. So before that, it was doping, but nobody
Speaker 2: called it doping. It's doping is one of these concepts
Speaker 2: that it's really defined by the policy against it rather
Speaker 2: than it being a practice. So we tend to talk
Speaker 2: about doping in sport, but outside of that, we say
Speaker 2: performance enhancing drugs or performance hancing substances or things like that.
Speaker 2: At the initial Olympic Games, what we know is that
Speaker 2: athletes were indeed using performance enhancing substances. What happened there
Speaker 2: is that we actually had the sort of very first
Speaker 2: rule against doping was at the Olympics, and it was
Speaker 2: specifically for the marathon, which of course was only men
Speaker 2: able to run this event. And this stated, you know,
Speaker 2: quite specifically that they weren't allowed to use anything to
Speaker 2: enhance their performance. And then there was no testing for this,
Speaker 2: so it was just a rule that wasn't really going
Speaker 2: to be enforced very well. So at that Olympics, what
Speaker 2: we saw was the winner, the eventual winner, was helped
Speaker 2: along to the finish line by a hefty dose of
Speaker 2: stryp nine and brandy, both of which at the time
Speaker 2: were thought to be performance enhancing.
Speaker 1: What is the alleged benefit of using strip nine as
Speaker 1: an athlete.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so basically it was believed to have stimulating properties
Speaker 2: that it would, you know, sort of increase your energy.
Speaker 2: That was the perceived benefit of it.
Speaker 1: And what about brandy in this context.
Speaker 2: So this was I'm not completely clear on the brandy.
Speaker 2: There's a bit there's a bit of a conflict because
Speaker 2: it's a this is a downer. We wouldn't think that
Speaker 2: that alcohol. But if you think back, you know, brandy
Speaker 2: was sort of used as one of these curatives, so
Speaker 2: you know, if you're if you're feeling faint, they give
Speaker 2: you a brandy to wake you up. So sort of
Speaker 2: the belief around that having some stimulating properties, which now,
Speaker 2: of course we know, you know you shouldn't take strict
Speaker 2: nine brandy isn't gonna make you more alert. But I
Speaker 2: think part of it was there was just no concept
Speaker 2: of the sort of dehydrating effects of alcohol and particularly
Speaker 2: mixed with poison. So that was sort of the sort
Speaker 2: of our first known or first recognized modern instance of doping,
Speaker 2: particularly at something like the Olympics.
Speaker 1: M And as I understand it, that marathon was sort
Speaker 1: of a mess, right, It was unusually hot and you
Speaker 1: were only allowed to drink water at one place.
Speaker 2: So the sort of heat and the lack of water,
Speaker 2: this is a recurring theme in endurance sport and in dopeing.
Speaker 2: We didn't understand hydration the way that we understand now.
Speaker 2: We didn't understand nutrition. You know, if you look at
Speaker 2: modern marathoning or modern endurance sport, there's a table every
Speaker 2: couple kilometers or every mile with water with electrolytes. Everyone
Speaker 2: carries their little gels. We understand that part of it better.
Speaker 2: At that point, there was I think only one stop
Speaker 2: on the course where you know, hydration was available. And
Speaker 2: it's a hot day, right, It's a summer Olympics, it's
Speaker 2: in Europe, it's going to be hot. So this sort
Speaker 2: of push this idea that maybe we need a boost,
Speaker 2: you know, like this is you know, sort of how
Speaker 2: we get people to finish.
Speaker 1: From this moment, there's this sort of delineation between what
Speaker 1: sort of is seen as a you know, accepted enhancement
Speaker 1: and what is a little bit more on the verboat inside.
Speaker 1: What sort of early themes start emerging from this moment
Speaker 1: of the marathon are finishing the race and him having
Speaker 1: this stuff in the system versus hydration and water, and
Speaker 1: like why is that acceptable versus the other stuff that
Speaker 1: he was using.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is this is a bit of a
Speaker 2: philosophical question that lots of us have wrestled with. So
Speaker 2: if we think about things like what the Olympics was
Speaker 2: at this point, the sort of first modern Olympic Games.
Speaker 2: Amateurism was the name of the game. So actually training
Speaker 2: itself was a revolutionary technology. This was performance enhancing because
Speaker 2: lots of these people. They were gentlemen, they were not
Speaker 2: working class, they were privileged, and the idea was that
Speaker 2: you just turn up and do these things. Now. Of course,
Speaker 2: at the same time there were professionalized sports where people
Speaker 2: did make money from them, and this sort of amateurism
Speaker 2: is the thing that delineated the where substance use was permitted.
Speaker 2: So the professionals, there's a great paper by my colleague
Speaker 2: ask Best Christiansen. The title of it is something like,
Speaker 2: we're not sportsmen, we're professionals. And the idea is that
Speaker 2: they're professionals, they're not amateurs, they're not just in this
Speaker 2: for the sort of love of the sport, and so
Speaker 2: that sort of emboldened them, or they felt enabled them
Speaker 2: to go ahead and use some things that wouldn't have
Speaker 2: been allowed under sort of the Olympic values. When we're
Speaker 2: talking about doping or performance enhancement, what we're talking about
Speaker 2: is moving beyond that baseline where it accepted food, water, hydration, nutrition.
Speaker 2: We're actually moving beyond that and we're looking for sort
Speaker 2: of a boost that takes us out of that sort
Speaker 2: of normative territory.
Speaker 1: In terms of competition and using something enhancing for an athlete.
Speaker 1: It seems like there's this real idea here about class.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about this class element
Speaker 1: to it and where it comes from in terms of doping.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, sport, and particularly what was then sort of
Speaker 2: elite Olympic sport, was really the sort of province of
Speaker 2: the gentleman class. If you sort of look at the
Speaker 2: people who organize the first few iterations of the modern Olympics,
Speaker 2: they've all got titles like Sir, Prince Duke. You know,
Speaker 2: these aren't working class heroes as we like to think
Speaker 2: of modern day Olympians. So the idea was that if
Speaker 2: you're an amateur, you're competing in a sport simply for
Speaker 2: the love of it, that it's about pure competition, it's
Speaker 2: about sort of seeing what the body can do. Whereas
Speaker 2: once we move into sort of professionalized sport, the idea
Speaker 2: is no longer about these ideas. And again these are
Speaker 2: sort of ideas constructions of what pure sport. And I
Speaker 2: really don't like these terms because they have no meaning. Really,
Speaker 2: this balance between it's no longer pure sport. This is
Speaker 2: sport for a competitive outcome. This is to win, this
Speaker 2: is to earn money, this is to do something besides
Speaker 2: just enjoy the competition or to put on a show
Speaker 2: something like that. So that's really where that tension comes in.
Speaker 2: And this sort of idea that one would engage in
Speaker 2: sport for pay was very much looked down upon by
Speaker 2: this gentleman class. But if you're a working class individual
Speaker 2: who wants to compete in sport, you're either doing this
Speaker 2: at the same time that you're trying to earn a living,
Speaker 2: which reduces your ability your chance. And it was all
Speaker 2: self funded at this point, so all of the travel
Speaker 2: to the games, all of the training, so this excluded
Speaker 2: a whole segment of socioeconomic classes that were just never
Speaker 2: going to be able to do this. So that's part
Speaker 2: of that sort of traditional divide where we really saw
Speaker 2: this as being something for the gentleman, and then this
Speaker 2: other stuff was maybe for the working classes if they
Speaker 2: wanted to enter or compete for money, but that was
Speaker 2: not meant to be part of the Olympics. Initially, the
Speaker 2: design of the original modern Olympics was that these were
Speaker 2: meant to be an amateur thing, and that this amateur
Speaker 2: ethos would carry through and this was what we're going
Speaker 2: to build our values around, and that was really the
Speaker 2: underpinning for the very first antidoping rules within the Olympic movement.
Speaker 1: I wanted to jump to the nineteen sixty Romalympics and
Speaker 1: that cycling race, which was such a pivotal moment in
Speaker 1: the history of all of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the nineteen sixty Games were actually quite pivotal
Speaker 2: in the sort of development of antidoping and the push
Speaker 2: for the IOC to take this seriously and to actually
Speaker 2: do something. So what happened at the nineteen sixty Games,
Speaker 2: so this is the Rome Olympics, is that we have
Speaker 2: a summer Games in Rome, and Rome is hot in
Speaker 2: the summer. So we have a cycling race, and we
Speaker 2: have the Danish cycling team is competing and one of
Speaker 2: their cyclists is the twenty one year old nude Anamark Jensen,
Speaker 2: and Jensen is competing in the heat of the day,
Speaker 2: so afternoon it's four degree celsius one hundred and five
Speaker 2: degrees fahrenheit and with inadequate hydration, inadequate fueling the way
Speaker 2: that we would consider it now, and tragically Jensen dies
Speaker 2: in the course of this race. Now, when he comes
Speaker 2: off his bike, he's attended to by the medical personnel
Speaker 2: they bring him into the medical tent to try to
Speaker 2: revive him, to try to give him medical attention, and
Speaker 2: unfortunately the medical tent was even hotter than the afternoon
Speaker 2: air in Rome, so this was probably close to fifty
Speaker 2: degrees cel state, so one hundred and ten plus degrees fahrenheit,
Speaker 2: which actually just exacerbated things and likely made things worse.
Speaker 2: They were unable to revive Jensen, so he did end
Speaker 2: up dying, and in the wake of this, his national
Speaker 2: team coach was interviewed about what happened in this race,
Speaker 2: and he mentions that his team had been given this
Speaker 2: drug called Ryanical, which is a vasodilator, which was intended
Speaker 2: to help enhance their performance. This was actually picked up
Speaker 2: by the media and misrepresented as being an amphetamine, and
Speaker 2: once this made it into the media, even though it
Speaker 2: was incorrect, the IOC and others, who were already predisposed
Speaker 2: against the use of performance enhancing substances and sport took
Speaker 2: this and ran with it. So this linking of Jensen's
Speaker 2: death with amphetamines led this push to we must do something.
Speaker 2: We must do something to address the issue of particularly
Speaker 2: amphetamine use in sport, but also just doping in general.
Speaker 2: So What this ended up turning into was the development
Speaker 2: and the establishment of the IOC's Medical Commission in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty seven, which was tasked with coming up with a
Speaker 2: set of rules around performance enhancing drugs and doping. Now,
Speaker 2: the interesting bit of this is that because this was
Speaker 2: all based on a mistake Jensen, it wasn't revealed until
Speaker 2: the two thousands when the Danish media did a deeper
Speaker 2: dive into what actually caused Jensen's death, where they looked
Speaker 2: at the autopsy report and found that actually Jensen didn't
Speaker 2: have amphetamines in his body, so his death wasn't actually
Speaker 2: caused by any drug. It was likely caused by the
Speaker 2: conditions of the day, inadequate hydration, poor fueling, and just
Speaker 2: bad luck. But this one mistake was enough to change
Speaker 2: the course of sporting and antidoping history in that the
Speaker 2: IOC appoints this Medical Commission that laid out the framework
Speaker 2: for antidoping that we still see today under the advisement
Speaker 2: of the World Antidoping Agency. So this whole approach that
Speaker 2: was laid out in nineteen sixty seven as a result
Speaker 2: of cases like Jensen's is actually the system, basically the
Speaker 2: framework for the system that we.
Speaker 1: Still have when we talk about sort of like you know,
Speaker 1: testosterone and steroid use, can you talk about the first
Speaker 1: and since that that sort of came prevalent in this sport.
Speaker 2: Oh, so this is really unclear and there is some
Speaker 2: disagreement about where the development of synthetic testosterone really came from.
Speaker 2: What we do know is that it was during the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties and that the sort of alleged story that
Speaker 2: is again controversial, was that there was a weightlifting coach
Speaker 2: who was visiting the Soviet Union and noticed that the
Speaker 2: athletes there were using a sort of synthesized testosterone that
Speaker 2: to improve their strength, and decided that he was going
Speaker 2: to bring this back to America and we were going
Speaker 2: to try this. And when that happened, it started within
Speaker 2: the weightlifting and particularly the bodybuilding communities. And it's generally
Speaker 2: associated with the West coast of the US California, Venice Beach,
Speaker 2: specifically Muscle Beach.
Speaker 3: Muscle Beach, where we're thirty dollars a year or three
Speaker 3: dollars a day you can join a club and look
Speaker 3: like this. Maku Beach is the only gym of its
Speaker 3: kind in the world.
Speaker 1: The being better California Mack will.
Speaker 3: Be all the great have worked out here, mister t
Speaker 3: Arnold Hulk Hogan.
Speaker 2: And this was right at the time that we saw
Speaker 2: the sort of shift in what male bodies looked like.
Speaker 2: And as we progress through the nineteen sixties, when this
Speaker 2: really started being used into the seventies and eighties, we
Speaker 2: see the rise of bodies like that of you know,
Speaker 2: the most famous bodybuilder of all, which is Arnold Schwarzeneger.
Speaker 4: I mean, you come down here the muscle beach and
Speaker 4: the Venice Peach platform, and you train first that many
Speaker 4: decades like I have, and pumped up the body and
Speaker 4: got tanned, and win the championships and eventually build a
Speaker 4: building to have you on the building a picture of
Speaker 4: my winning pose. And that's right here, paw. How about that?
Speaker 2: Huh? His body is still often held up as sort
Speaker 2: of the perfect symmetrical male bodybuilder. Once these things start
Speaker 2: being used, even in these sort of fringes, but it
Speaker 2: becomes clear that they are effective, they make their way
Speaker 2: into sport. And frankly, when these first started being introduced
Speaker 2: into sport, there weren't explicit rules against them, and there
Speaker 2: was no test, There was no mechanism for regulating these
Speaker 2: or for catching anyone. So you know, amphetamines in some
Speaker 2: ways made a lot of sense for antidoping because developing
Speaker 2: a test for an amphetamine is pretty straightforward. Developing a
Speaker 2: test for an animalic steroid was much more difficult, partly
Speaker 2: because there's different ways of synthesizing them, there's different ways
Speaker 2: of testing for them, there's different ways of using them,
Speaker 2: and how sensitive tests could be at that point to
Speaker 2: actually detect steroid use. So this it actually took quite
Speaker 2: a bit of time after these became used in sport,
Speaker 2: before antidoping was able to develop any form of useful
Speaker 2: test for steroids.
Speaker 1: Going to the sixties, specifically, I was struck in reading
Speaker 1: around how elaborate some of these, like national doping programs were, specifically,
Speaker 1: like the East German one. I'm wondering if you could
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about that program and how it
Speaker 1: fits into the enforcement issue.
Speaker 2: So these German program was extensive, it included a huge
Speaker 2: number of athletes, tens of thousands of athletes, and it
Speaker 2: was effective. So at the time East Germany began a
Speaker 2: program of doping athletes, and these included athletes that were
Speaker 2: considered developmental athletes, so those that were on their way
Speaker 2: to becoming international level. So this was directed by the States,
Speaker 2: so this was state sponsored doping, but they determined that
Speaker 2: athletes were going to be given anabolic steroids as well
Speaker 2: as a list of other things to enhance their sporting performance.
Speaker 2: Now the issue, there are many issues with what happened
Speaker 2: in East Germany. One is around the issue of knowledge
Speaker 2: and consent of the athletes that were included. So there
Speaker 2: appears to be a range of consent that and understanding
Speaker 2: amongst the athletes themselves. Some of them knew what was
Speaker 2: happening and went along with it. Some of them did
Speaker 2: not know what they were being given. You know, there
Speaker 2: are reports that have come out and some of the
Speaker 2: victims themselves have actually spoken out, become academics themselves written
Speaker 2: about this, but that some of them became aware that
Speaker 2: they were getting something that wasn't just a vitamin when
Speaker 2: they started developing. Side of hets so clear, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of what we would think of our human rights violations,
Speaker 2: you know, drugging people without consent. The other part of
Speaker 2: it was the sort of shocking effectiveness of this regime.
Speaker 2: So East Germany really punched above their weight in terms
Speaker 2: of their metal hole. So East Germany was actually quite
Speaker 2: a small country, not very populous. It wouldn't have been
Speaker 2: predicted to be on par with countries like the US
Speaker 2: with the Soviet Union, with its West German counterpart, it
Speaker 2: would often we understand that population size and economic strength
Speaker 2: actually are great predictors of how will you do at
Speaker 2: international sporting competitions, and they were doing extremely well. So
Speaker 2: this did raise red flags as well as some of
Speaker 2: the appearances of many of the athletes, in particularly the
Speaker 2: women athletes.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, side effects, Yeah, what kind of things were
Speaker 1: we seeing?
Speaker 2: So the women themselves when they would turn up at competitions,
Speaker 2: there were often comments and comments that would be picked
Speaker 2: up by the media from spectators from other athletes about
Speaker 2: how masculine it looked, so large muscles, what they perceived
Speaker 2: to be very square jaws, just basically having sort of
Speaker 2: what we'd understand to be sort of a masculine look
Speaker 2: to them. Now, the actual side effects that these women
Speaker 2: were experiencing are what we still see in women who
Speaker 2: use anabolic steroids, So things like a deep in voice,
Speaker 2: growth of facial and other body hair, the sort of
Speaker 2: enlarged clitorous acne, all of the sort of effects on
Speaker 2: sort of their secondary sex characteristics. There are masculinizing effects
Speaker 2: to using these substances, particularly in the types of doses
Speaker 2: that some of these women were getting. You know, the
Speaker 2: East German government wasn't giving them small doses. They were
Speaker 2: giving them the highest doses they could get away with.
Speaker 2: Within the men, it's a little less obvious because generally speaking,
Speaker 2: they were using synthetic testosterone to get these effects, and
Speaker 2: in men it sort of amplified the things that we
Speaker 2: already think of as being masculine in men. So it
Speaker 2: made their muscles bigger, maybe made their voices deeper, may
Speaker 2: have increased facial hair, acne, all of the same things.
Speaker 2: It can also lead to some side effects, and these
Speaker 2: are just general side effects of using and Buxeris can
Speaker 2: lead to genocamastia, which is the sort of growth and
Speaker 2: breast tissue in men, can lead to impacts on testicular size.
Speaker 2: So all of these things were occurring in the men.
Speaker 2: It was just a bit more difficult to see it
Speaker 2: so clearly within the men than it was within the women.
Speaker 1: After the break nineteen eighty eight Summer Olympics doping scandal
Speaker 1: that changed everything, I wanted to ask you about like, okay,
Speaker 1: after the Shermans, you know, the Olympics start testing athletes.
Speaker 1: Do you remember which games these were specifically?
Speaker 2: So, the first test for antaalox steroids was actually developed
Speaker 2: in the mid nineteen seventies, nineteen seventy four, seventy four.
Speaker 2: What games would that have been? Seventy six, seventy eight.
Speaker 2: And this meant that the International Olympic Committee, amongst others,
Speaker 2: could formally prohibit these. So they had been on the
Speaker 2: list of things that you weren't supposed to do, but
Speaker 2: without an enforcement mechanism, there wasn't a lot that could
Speaker 2: be done apart from catching somebody in the act of
Speaker 2: using them. And you know, the first tests were fairly rudimentary.
Speaker 2: They basically could say whether or not there was the
Speaker 2: presence of a metabolite. So when these were ruled out,
Speaker 2: this meant that those who were using these had to
Speaker 2: change their oh to avoid getting caught. So in a
Speaker 2: country like East Germany, what this meant was that they
Speaker 2: started pre testing their athletes before they sent them to
Speaker 2: competitions to ensure that they wouldn't flag a dope. Big test. Now,
Speaker 2: this also meant that the science of how quickly substances cleared,
Speaker 2: the body progressed rapidly. They had a fairly good idea
Speaker 2: about how long it would take for the sort of
Speaker 2: metabolites to become undetectable based on the current testing, because
Speaker 2: they were subjecting their athletes to testing ahead of time. Now,
Speaker 2: this led in some cases to being at competitions where
Speaker 2: we would sometimes see athletes drop out of events on
Speaker 2: short notice or with no notice. They just wouldn't turn
Speaker 2: up for an event if they it was sort of
Speaker 2: understood that there was going to be testing, but because
Speaker 2: it was limited to the incompetition testing, it was still
Speaker 2: fairly easy to get around the test.
Speaker 1: So you know, these policies are rulled out and testing
Speaker 1: is instituted. Did it actually help keep competition fair?
Speaker 2: It depends what you mean by fair in the sense
Speaker 2: that everyone was going to be tested at the competition
Speaker 2: under a sort of systemized way. Then Yet, if it
Speaker 2: meant that everyone had equal opportunity to use, stop use,
Speaker 2: and avoid testing positive during those tests, then also yes,
Speaker 2: If it meant that people were actually put off of
Speaker 2: using these substances, then no, we know that was not
Speaker 2: the case, and this became very clear in possibly the
Speaker 2: most pivotal scandal in sport doping history, which was Ben
Speaker 2: Johnson at the nineteen eighty eight Olympics. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about that, like what
Speaker 1: happened and what that sort of did for the rise
Speaker 1: of the anti doping movement.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the Ben Johnson case, which I will say first,
Speaker 2: in my view, is one of the great miscarriages of
Speaker 2: sport justice, not because he didn't do anything wrong, but
Speaker 2: because of the way that the story has been framed historically.
Speaker 2: So basically, in nineteen eighty eight, we're going into the
Speaker 2: Summer Olympics, and of course one of the perennially most
Speaker 2: popular events at the Summer Games is the men's one
Speaker 2: hundred meter final. Going into nineteen eighty eight, there was
Speaker 2: actually quite a rivalry setup that had been hyped by
Speaker 2: the media between Ben Johnson, who's a Canadian sprinter, and
Speaker 2: Carl Lewis, who is the very well known American sprinter.
Speaker 5: At this moment, Carlows starts his quest for four gold medal,
Speaker 5: a chance to succeed and to walk where no other
Speaker 5: athlete has ever been, or to fail and fail magnificently.
Speaker 2: So we get into the final and in news that
Speaker 2: will shock no One. Both Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis
Speaker 2: were there. We're really fortunate here that you have two
Speaker 2: men absolutely in their prime in the Olympic final. Usually
Speaker 2: now the race goes off.
Speaker 5: We started is Ben Johnson dart bet.
Speaker 2: And the thing that did shock everyone was that Ben
Speaker 2: Johnson beat Carl Lewis.
Speaker 4: It's bet.
Speaker 2: And there are some really great images that you can
Speaker 2: find of that race where after they crossed the finish
Speaker 2: line you see this very triumphant Johnson and then just
Speaker 2: over his shoulder we see this very confused and shocked
Speaker 2: Carl Lewis, who cannot believe he didn't win this race.
Speaker 2: I just don't know how he does it, or whether
Speaker 2: he gets a hypnotist or something, but he does something
Speaker 2: to stimulate him in the finals. Now, immediately after this,
Speaker 2: Ben Johnson and others in that final were given an
Speaker 2: anti doping test, and the next day Ben Johnson is
Speaker 2: told that his has comeback positive and he's going to
Speaker 2: have his gold medal taken away. Now, this was a
Speaker 2: surprise to Johnson, again not because he denied using steroids,
Speaker 2: but that he was convinced that he had stopped using
Speaker 2: them in plenty of time before the Games that he
Speaker 2: shouldn't have tested positive and actually the drug that he
Speaker 2: was found to have tested positive four he claims he
Speaker 2: never actually used. When this story broke, this was an
Speaker 2: overnight scandal and this dominated headlines.
Speaker 6: But the main story of the night doesn't concern the
Speaker 6: spirit of competition, but a man who's judged to have cheated.
Speaker 6: Ben Johnson, celebrated on Saturday as the Olympic one hundred
Speaker 6: meters champion, the fastest man of the world, fails a
Speaker 6: drug test, is stripped to the gold medal and leaves
Speaker 6: the Olympic city in disgrace.
Speaker 2: This is the biggest story around those Olympics, and because
Speaker 2: of the sort of size of this scandal and the
Speaker 2: profile of this event and these athletes, the IOC really
Speaker 2: could not not do anything about this. So after the Games,
Speaker 2: you know, he goes he goes back to Canada and
Speaker 2: there is an inquiry opened by the Canadian government and
Speaker 2: this was an investigation into steroid use but also performance
Speaker 2: enhancement generally in Canadian sport, and Ben Johnson cooperated. Basically,
Speaker 2: what they found was that the use of steroids was
Speaker 2: absolutely widespread across Canada. The Ben Johnson scandal also kicked
Speaker 2: off similar investigations in other countries. So Sweden had its
Speaker 2: own investigation that happened. There was something similar that happened
Speaker 2: in the US, not quite the same scale, but there
Speaker 2: was some talk amongst US sporting officials that actually, maybe
Speaker 2: they should be doing better to keep up with the
Speaker 2: Canadians on this. So what happened in Canada put pressure
Speaker 2: on other countries to start paying attention to how this,
Speaker 2: how this was used. That actually it turns out that
Speaker 2: steroid use is much more widespread in sport than anyone thought.
Speaker 2: Now back to that original Games where Johnson lost his medal,
Speaker 2: one of the Olympic officials, a high level officials who
Speaker 2: was actually at the games, that was a gentleman named
Speaker 2: Dick Pound. Now Dick Pound was tasked with guiding Ben
Speaker 2: Johnson in the wake of his positive test. Dick Pound
Speaker 2: was also Canadian. He was a lawyer, so this did
Speaker 2: make sense. Now. What happened as a result of this
Speaker 2: is that Dick Pound, I think, was quite upset that
Speaker 2: he felt misled by Johnson who proclaimed innocence even in
Speaker 2: the face of this positive test, and he actually committed
Speaker 2: himself to this sort of idea of antidoping and sport
Speaker 2: of this fight against doping. So about ten years later
Speaker 2: Dick Pound becomes the first president of the World Antidoping Agency.
Speaker 1: So the creation of the World Anti Doping Agency, what
Speaker 1: countries were on board initially? Was it all the Olympic
Speaker 1: countries or was it to.
Speaker 2: Select view So in nineteen ninety nine was when WADA
Speaker 2: was created after the conference at Luzon that was called
Speaker 2: by the IOC, But really this came as a result
Speaker 2: of pressure from national governments following the Festina affair at
Speaker 2: the nineteen ninety eight Tour de France, and this was
Speaker 2: where several teams, but particularly the Festina racing team, were
Speaker 2: found to be engaging in performance enhancement using all sorts
Speaker 2: of drugs and techniques, and it was this became a
Speaker 2: police action, a French police action, because it was actually
Speaker 2: a team official, Willie Bohett, driving a team car into
Speaker 2: France and he got stopped at the border and his
Speaker 2: car was searched and they found all sorts of doping paraphernalia, substances,
Speaker 2: things he wasn't supposed to have, but because it was
Speaker 2: found by the border police, it actually became a police matter.
Speaker 2: So this meant the French government had to be involved,
Speaker 2: so there were hotel raids, there were all of these things,
Speaker 2: and actually the cyclists themselves were really upset at the
Speaker 2: police action, so they actually staged a sit in protest
Speaker 2: at the beginning of the Tour de France against this
Speaker 2: sort of interference in the sport. Even though this was
Speaker 2: against the rules, it was sort of one of these
Speaker 2: open secrets within the sport that sort of everybody was
Speaker 2: doing it, but actually they now involved the police. Now,
Speaker 2: as a result of this, every other country in the
Speaker 2: world said, we do not want to be in the
Speaker 2: position that France is in. So the IOC needs to
Speaker 2: do something. They have to do something. So the IOC
Speaker 2: at this point was the global policy making body for
Speaker 2: antidoping in sport, and they felt that they had this
Speaker 2: pretty much under control. Yes, this was a scandal. Here's
Speaker 2: what we'll do. We'll call a meeting, everybody will get
Speaker 2: together and lose on, will come up with some new ideas,
Speaker 2: and basically they expected to leave that meeting still in
Speaker 2: control of antidoping. What they did not expect was sort
Speaker 2: of the pushback from national governments who do not want
Speaker 2: to repeat of what happened in France. So this ends
Speaker 2: up with an agreement to set up a quasi independent
Speaker 2: body that would be the sort of global policy maker
Speaker 2: for antidoping in sport, and this is where we get
Speaker 2: the World Antidoping Agency.
Speaker 1: Can you elaborate on quasi a little bit?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 2: The reason that I say that is because the idea
Speaker 2: that you would have sports or countries making and enforcing
Speaker 2: antidoping policy themselves was a bit like the fox looking
Speaker 2: after the henhouse, right that, really, would they be willing
Speaker 2: to turn their own athletes in or would the Olympics
Speaker 2: want that sort of negative publicity that they would have
Speaker 2: to give themselves by holding superstar athletes accountable. So what
Speaker 2: they wanted was something that was a bit more independent
Speaker 2: than that, that would be a real regulatory body. The
Speaker 2: problem is that to fund something like this, that money
Speaker 2: had to come from somewhere, because antidoping is it was
Speaker 2: and remains extremely expensive. So the WATA budget was agreed
Speaker 2: to be covered fifty percent by the Olympic movement and
Speaker 2: fifty percent by the sort of member countries. So in
Speaker 2: the past few years there's been a lot of tension
Speaker 2: between USADA in the United States and WADA. The reason
Speaker 2: that this becomes such a big deal is because as
Speaker 2: the US threatened to do at multiple points is withhold
Speaker 2: their contribution to the WADA budget. It's such a big
Speaker 2: proportion that actually it really constricts what WADA can actually do.
Speaker 1: After the break, we get into Water's legacy and April's
Speaker 1: thoughts on the enhanced Games. Since the establishment of WATA,
Speaker 1: there've been at least two major scandals, and I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about Lance Armstrong twenty twelve the Russian doping scandal in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. I'm curious for your take on like what
Speaker 1: wata's legacy to this point is sort of looking like
Speaker 1: in your head.
Speaker 2: I think WATA and antidoping in the Olympic movement was
Speaker 2: initially extremely well intentioned. The idea of keeping sport fair
Speaker 2: and safe, I think, are generally speaking positive things. I
Speaker 2: think part of the issues with WATA and some of
Speaker 2: the issues for its legacy are around the way that
Speaker 2: they have decided to define that and the way that
Speaker 2: they have decided to implement that. So, in terms of
Speaker 2: the complete one hundred percent zero tolerance prohibition approach, strict
Speaker 2: liability leaves no room for error. This means literally the
Speaker 2: different athlete makes a mistake and ingests something without even
Speaker 2: realizing they're doing it, they can still be on the
Speaker 2: hook if they return a positive sample. Now there are
Speaker 2: some mitigations to that, but what we have seen is
Speaker 2: that actually it's really really difficult unless you have a
Speaker 2: lot of money and a lot of very sophisticated legal
Speaker 2: support to actually have a defense against a positive doping test.
Speaker 2: That's a real problem because we also know that athletes
Speaker 2: are human, they're fallible, they make mistakes. But it also
Speaker 2: leaves no room for development or for innovation in terms
Speaker 2: of what people might use, what might be useful, what
Speaker 2: might even be healthy. Based on this sort of quite
Speaker 2: conservative approach to WATA. Now, I think that has led
Speaker 2: to a quite a bit of backlash in some ways.
Speaker 2: So when we see athletes being punished for simple mistakes,
Speaker 2: or conversely, we see athletes that because we've been conditioned
Speaker 2: to not believe any of the reasonings for a positive test,
Speaker 2: we see athletes who get off without much punishment at all,
Speaker 2: and we sort of go, is that really fair? Is
Speaker 2: that really fair? You're not gonna you're not gonna do
Speaker 2: anything about that. Is it because they're wealthy? Is it
Speaker 2: because there it's that country, what is the reasoning around that?
Speaker 2: And it's set up a lot of mistrust in sport,
Speaker 2: the vogue to hell is paid with good intentions, but
Speaker 2: in this case it really does seem that there could
Speaker 2: have been different choices made. There could have been a
Speaker 2: bit more flexibility or allowing a bit more of an
Speaker 2: athlete voice that hasn't been taken up.
Speaker 1: And what sort of is the incentive for WATA in
Speaker 1: terms of like being permissive for say, Russian athletes competing.
Speaker 1: What is the sort of the incentive for them to
Speaker 1: allow those athletes to still compete under a slightly different
Speaker 1: flag even though they have a zero tolerance policy.
Speaker 2: Supposeily this goes back to the sort of entwined ideas
Speaker 2: of sport claiming to be politically neutral or apolitical, which
Speaker 2: is clearly impossible. Neutrality is a political choice, but also
Speaker 2: the sort of tension with the desire to avoid collective punishment.
Speaker 2: So the idea that we actually shouldn't be punishing those
Speaker 2: who haven't done anything wrong, but that they have to
Speaker 2: hold the actual federation or the club or the team
Speaker 2: or whatever it is, that they have to hold that
Speaker 2: unit accountable. But in practice we all have eyes. We
Speaker 2: all have ears. We've all seen what the independent athletes
Speaker 2: from Russia look like at the Russian Games. They're not
Speaker 2: supposed to have flags, they're not supposed to have these things.
Speaker 2: But there's still a team. There's still independent athletes to
Speaker 2: Marutia that has become a team in itself. There was
Speaker 2: no good option for them at that point because there
Speaker 2: was no mechanism to deal with state sponsored doping built
Speaker 2: into the WATER Code. There was no contingency plan, there
Speaker 2: was no there's nothing. So they were really on the
Speaker 2: back foot on that one, trying to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 2: how do we hold this system accountable while not disadvantaging
Speaker 2: the athletes and also Russia. Let's be real, it always
Speaker 2: comes back to money. Russia is one of the biggest
Speaker 2: media markets for international sport, particularly the Olympic Games. You
Speaker 2: ban Russian athletes, Russians aren't going to tune in nearly
Speaker 2: at the same way. So that would cost the IOC
Speaker 2: or any of these sports federations lots of money, which
Speaker 2: they don't want to give up.
Speaker 1: What do you see as being like a sort of
Speaker 1: smarter approach that an organization like water could take going forward.
Speaker 2: I'm an academic and I'm part of an academic community
Speaker 2: of researchers who have made lots and lots of recommendations
Speaker 2: or suggestions over the years, and none of them have
Speaker 2: been taken up. One of the things that many of
Speaker 2: us have said is that the sort of zero tolerance,
Speaker 2: prohibitive approach is going to eventually lead to some sort
Speaker 2: of backlash. And some of the things that we've suggested
Speaker 2: in the interim or to prevent this, or to make
Speaker 2: this a bit more fair instead of just this black
Speaker 2: white yes note, would be to do things like shorten
Speaker 2: the prohibited substances list. So every year this list gets longer.
Speaker 2: There it is rare for anything to be removed from
Speaker 2: this list, But every year this list gets longer, And
Speaker 2: as this gets longer, it gets harder and harder to follow,
Speaker 2: and harder and harder to avoid things that are on it.
Speaker 2: What if we actually only include things that are demonstrated
Speaker 2: to be performance enhancing in some way. What if we
Speaker 2: focus on just the things that have demonstrated ability to
Speaker 2: harm an individual At the end of the day, antidoping
Speaker 2: is a set of arbitrary lines around what is and
Speaker 2: what isn't allowed. So other recommendations so The one that
Speaker 2: I advocate for is actually that we have as a
Speaker 2: sort of scaled approach, so as you're going up through
Speaker 2: the sort of levels of sport competition, that your levels
Speaker 2: of education and support are actually increased as you go up.
Speaker 2: You know, if you're fifteen sixteen years old, you live
Speaker 2: with your parents, or do you get to decide what
Speaker 2: goes into your dinner? You know, these types of things.
Speaker 2: Should we be holding them to the same standard as
Speaker 2: grown men and women who do have control over these things,
Speaker 2: and who have lots and lots of coaching and metal
Speaker 2: support and oversight and people to look out for these things.
Speaker 2: Those are not the same.
Speaker 1: When did you first hear about the enhanced Games? And
Speaker 1: what was sort of your reaction to them?
Speaker 2: So very different from what it is now. So I
Speaker 2: first heard about this on Twitter. Actually, someone forwarded me
Speaker 2: some tweet. I think it was probably from Aaron Desuza
Speaker 2: himself talking about this idea for the enhanced Games, and
Speaker 2: all good academics we've all gone through the sort of
Speaker 2: mental exercise of God, what would it be like if
Speaker 2: we did sport and we let people use whatever they wanted.
Speaker 2: It is a sort of an academic exercise that you do.
Speaker 2: So initially I was quite I was just curious, curious
Speaker 2: enough that two years ago we invited Aaron Desuza as
Speaker 2: the keynote speaker for the International Network of Doping Researchers
Speaker 2: that I'm the joint director of. And he came and
Speaker 2: gave us his basically his pitch for what this was
Speaker 2: and why this was a great idea, And Yeah, took
Speaker 2: some questions, many he didn't have great answers to while
Speaker 2: acknowledging that he's not a scientist, he's not a doctor.
Speaker 2: He's not he's not even a sports doctor. To be fair.
Speaker 2: He came, he took the questions, and Yeah, I left
Speaker 2: with very very different view of things than when I
Speaker 2: went in. I'll put it that way.
Speaker 1: What was the main part of his argument that sort
Speaker 1: of made a flip swhich in your head that.
Speaker 2: It had very little to do with sport, That this
Speaker 2: became very clearly it was profit motivated and this was
Speaker 2: a way of leveraging sport and athletes' bodies to sell
Speaker 2: enhancement products to the public. Yeah, which I am fully
Speaker 2: aware that alcohol companies, tobacco companies, oil companies, all of
Speaker 2: these things that we may not love are some of
Speaker 2: the biggest sponsors and supporters of professional and elite sport.
Speaker 2: I fully understand that the difference here was the sort
Speaker 2: of idea that we're going to take all of the
Speaker 2: guardrails off and we're going to the one athlete who
Speaker 2: I'm sure he regrets saying this in this way, but
Speaker 2: you know, I'm going to dope to the gills. Well,
Speaker 2: we know those some of us who do this work,
Speaker 2: We know what this can look like, and we also
Speaker 2: understand what needs to be done in order to minimize
Speaker 2: the long term risk to athlete health. Because as much
Speaker 2: as criticism I have against WATA, I actually do think
Speaker 2: athlete health should be the priority. They're doing it safely,
Speaker 2: and then they're sort of rushing into it before you
Speaker 2: have your ducks in a row.
Speaker 1: What struck me about them was this really moderated approach
Speaker 1: in terms of athlete safety, like constant monitoring, constant testing,
Speaker 1: and constant reassessment about whether something is working or not
Speaker 1: for them. Do you see an idea like this being
Speaker 1: something that can actually make a difference in the world
Speaker 1: of sport that do you think it could have any
Speaker 1: positive change?
Speaker 2: I think in some ways yes, So I think there's
Speaker 2: already been some positive change, so we've now seen so
Speaker 2: one of the big one of his big talking points
Speaker 2: is that he's going to compensate athletes in a very
Speaker 2: different way. So at the last Athletics Track and Field
Speaker 2: a World Athletics Championships, we see price purses in ways
Speaker 2: that we haven't seen them before, and I cannot believe
Speaker 2: that's not directly related to this push that athletes are
Speaker 2: going Actually, we need to be compensated in a more
Speaker 2: fair way. You make so much money off of us.
Speaker 2: You look at how much the Olympics turns over in
Speaker 2: any given olympiad and it's huge, It's in the billions,
Speaker 2: and athletes get a very small amount of that. There
Speaker 2: is there has been that in terms of the enhancement stuff.
Speaker 2: I will be honest, I do not see that moving.
Speaker 2: What he's doing or what he's proposing for these athletes
Speaker 2: is not new. So one of my main areas of
Speaker 2: research has been on internet forums, looking at people who
Speaker 2: use animaloic steroids specifically, but a whole range of performance
Speaker 2: enhancing drugs and how they do it safely, sometimes less safely,
Speaker 2: the risks that they're willing to take this isn't new.
Speaker 2: Maybe this seems like it gives it a bit of
Speaker 2: a legitimate platform, But at some point, what happens when
Speaker 2: we break the world record? Where do we go from there?
Speaker 2: Because eventually is can we continue this push? Is the
Speaker 2: development and the way of using these substances going to
Speaker 2: be able to keep up with that sort of first
Speaker 2: for new records and breaking boundaries and all of these things,
Speaker 2: or is this going to be a one off maybe
Speaker 2: a two off event, because really the purpose behind this
Speaker 2: is contract with pharmaceutical companies, and so it's sort of
Speaker 2: this blending of the performance culture, anti aging, panic around wellness,
Speaker 2: the imperative to be well, to be healthy, to constantly
Speaker 2: be better, and the sort of neoliberalization of life that's
Speaker 2: been going on for decades. I mean, the idea that
Speaker 2: you're not well. It's like do I need another product
Speaker 2: or do I need universal healthcare?
Speaker 1: April, This is so good, This is so fantastic. This
Speaker 1: stuff I found absolutely enthralling and fascinating and worth talking about.
Speaker 2: Nice to meet you and yeah thanks.
Speaker 1: Superhuman is a Kaleidoscale production in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: The series is produced, reported, and co hosted by Sam
Speaker 1: Egan then Emzzi's mental is our senior producer. Production support
Speaker 1: from Dara Luk Potts, Edited by Kate Osborne, Editorial consulting
Speaker 1: by Adiza Egan, Original composition by Hannis Brown, mixing by
Speaker 1: Pran Bandy, Reported and hosted by me Chris Guyamali. From Kaleidoscope,
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Kate Osborne, Ozwa Oshan Mangeshati Kador
Speaker 1: and Kosislinos. Julia Nutter is the head of Studio for Kaleidoscope,
Speaker 1: and From My Heart. Our executive produces our Katrina Norval
Speaker 1: and Nikki Etor. If you like what you're hearing, subscribe
Speaker 1: to the feed now so you don't miss our next
Speaker 1: straw