Pharmacology, Doping and Sports

A Scientific Guide for Athletes, Coaches, Physicians, Scientists and Administrators

Jean L. Fourcroy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134088799
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Pharmacology

The work of dope testers is constantly being obstructed by the development of ever harder-to-trace new forms of banned substances. Organisations such as the World Anti-Doping Association and the United States Anti-Doping Agency are pioneering cutting-edge techniques designed to keep competition at the highest level fair and safe, and must ensure that their drug testing laboratories adhere to the highest scientific standards. In Pharmacology, Doping and Sports these techniques and procedures are explained by the anti-doping experts who practice them.

Broad-ranging in scope, this book examines the effects of performance-enhancing substances on the athlete's health; the role of anti-doping procedures as an ethical question, and explains the background to, and the emergence of, the anti-doping movement. The book also offers in-depth analysis of key scientific matters, such as:

• 
  
  

• standard analytical and diagnostic tests for sports doping
• regulatory standards for laboratory proficiency
• common performance-enhancing techniques such as anabolic and designer steroids, blood doping, growth hormones, and gene doping
• carbon-isotope ratio testing.

Written by some of the world's leading authorities on the science of sports doping, Pharmacology, Doping and Sports provides an invaluable study of up-to-the-minute anti-doping techniques. This book is essential reading for all sports scientists, coaches, policy-makers, students and athletes interested in the science or ethics of doping in sport.

1 The historical and scientific pathway to fair and accurate testing

Jean L Fourcroy and Baaron Pittinger

1 Introduction

The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.

(The Olympic Creed¹)

In the name of all competitors, I promise that we shall take part in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules which govern them, in the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of sport and the honor of our teams.

(The Olympic Oath, delivered by an athlete of the host nation during the Opening Ceremonies²)

Given these two foundations on which athlete participation in the Games rests, it is obvious why the battle against doping in sport is of such importance to the Olympic Movement. Further, among the stated objectives of the International Olympic Committee is the promotion of the Olympics throughout the world by encouraging and supporting ethics in sport, and dedicating its efforts to ensuring that in sport, the spirit of fair play prevails. Simply put, doping is antithetical to the spirit of the Games. In recent years doping scandals have tarnished the Games, but the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and other responsible members of the Olympic family are making a determined effort to restore their integrity.

2 The beginnings

The Olympic Games have a long history. Olympic sport was first recorded in 776 BC, but may have begun as early as the thirteenth century BC. The Greeks based their chronology on four-year periods called Olympiads (a practice that has been retained in the modern games), dating from 776 BC, and the Olympic festival marked the beginning of each Olympiad. The festival was a religious event to celebrate the gods, but primarily Zeus, worshiped in common by all Hellenes. There were three other major pan-Hellenic festivals, all of which included fairs, but the festival at Olympia had become preeminent by 572 BC, when Elis and Sparta entered into an alliance under which Elis was in charge of the event itself, while Sparta enforced the sacred 30-day no-war truce.³

A single foot race the length of the stadium, approximately 200 yards, was the only athletic event until the fifteenth Olympiad, when other types of sports began to make their way into the festival: wrestling and the pentathlon in 708 BC, boxing in 688 BC, and chariot racing in 680 BC. At one time or another, there were 23 Olympic sports events, but they were never all conducted at the same festival.

A wild olive branch was the only official prize for an Olympic winner, although some unofficial prizes were awarded by city-states. Athens allowed an Olympic champion to live free of charge in the Prytaneum, at a special hall for distinguished citizens. Other city-states exempted winners from taxes for an Olympiad, and in some cases citizens contributed to a cash award. In AD 349, the Roman emperor Theodosius the Great, a devout Christian, decreed an end to the Olympic Games and their celebration of the Greek gods. They had lasted more than a thousand years, and left an ember that burst into flame again in the late nineteenth century.

3 The modern games

Baron de Coubertin is given credit for reestablishing the Games. However, through the years there were more than 40 different events that played off the Olympic theme – frequently in connection with industrial fairs during the industrial revolution.^4,5 It is believed that de Coubertin witnessed earlier Olympic festival games at Chelsea Stadium in London: amateur athletes only, and medals rather than cash prizes. As the line between amateur and professional athletes became increasingly blurred, particularly with the advent of state-sponsored athletes, several international federations have voted to make professionals eligible for participation, with IOC approval.

Baron de Coubertin, who was French, had grown up in the shadow of his country’s devastating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1 and was determined to devote his life to education, and especially to physical education. In 1889, he organized the Congress of Physical Education in Paris, and in 1892 he began espousing the idea of a rebirth of the Olympic Games, but attracted little notice. Despite repeated rebuffs, not only from his own countrymen but from the British and Americans as well, de Coubertin persisted. On June 23, 1894, he presided over a meeting of 79 delegates representing 12 countries, who unanimously voted for the restoration of the Olympic Games.⁵

As a result, the IOC was organized in 1894 in Paris with the goal of staging the first modern Olympics in Paris in 1900.⁶ Pressed by de Coubertin, the IOC soon decided to aim for 1896, with Athens as the site. That idea, too, met with resistance, especially from the government of Greece. But when Georgios Averoff of Alexandria donated 920,000 gold drachmas to build an Olympic stadium in Athens, the resistance folded, and the king of Greece himself opened the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.

To the traditional track and field events, which include the marathon and decathlon, a host of sports have been added so that today there are multiple sports on the program of the Summer Games. The Games were strictly for men until 1900 at the Paris Summer Games, when women first took part.⁷ The IOC has since significantly increased the participation of women. A separate series of Winter Olympic meets was inaugurated in 1924 at Chamonix, France. The Winter Games are much smaller, are limited to sports that can be contested on either ice or snow, and have begun to include nontraditional sports as the IOC attempts to maintain the Games’ appeal to a young audience. After the 1992 Games, the IOC placed the Winter Games on a new cycle, beginning in 1994, with the Summer Games keeping to the same schedule and celebrating the centennial event in Atlanta in 1996.⁸

4 The International Olympic Committee

Today, organizations included in the Olympic Movement are headed by the IOC, the International Federations (IFs), the National Olympic Committees (NOCs), the National Governing Bodies (NGBs) for each sport, which operate under the aegis of the NOCs, and the Organizing Committees of the Olympic Games (OCOGs), which disappear after they have conducted the Games. The IOC, also called the Comité International Olympique, is based in Lausanne, Switzerland; its membership currently includes 206 NOCs. The IOC serves as the umbrella organization and owns all rights to the Olympic symbols, flag, motto, anthem and the Olympic Games themselves. It awards the sites and oversees the organization of the Games by the OCOGs. In addition, the IOC seeks, through a variety of programs, to encourage and support initiatives blending sport with culture and education.⁶

5 The United States Olympic Committee (USOC)

The USOC began as a small group headed by James E. Sullivan, the founder of the Amateur Athletic Union, which entered the 12 US athletes who participated in the inaugural Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. The delegation was headed by Dr William Milligan Sloane, a Princeton Professor, and all of the athletes had either Princeton or Harvard ties. Sloane served as first president of the committee, and became a close confidant of de Coubertin. The committee was finally formalized as the American Olympic Association (AOA) at a meeting in November 1921 at the New York Athletic Club.⁸

In 1940, the AOA changed its name to the United States of America Sports Federation, and in 1945 changed it again to the United States Olympic Association (USOA). Public Law 805, which granted the USOA a federal charter, was enacted in 1950 and enabled the USOA to solicit tax-deductible contributions as a private, nonprofit corporation. When the USOA made major constitutional revisions in 1961, it adopted its current name, the United States Olympic Committee (USOC). The USOC moved its headquarters from New York City to Colorado Springs on July 1, 1978.⁹

The passage of Public Law 95–606, the Amateur Sports Act (now known as the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act), on November 8, 1978 was without question the most significant development in the history of the USOC.¹⁰ It specifically named the USOC as the coordinating body for athletic activity in the United States directly relating to international family athletic competition, including the sports on the programs of the Olympic, Paralympic and Pan-American games, strengthened its fund-raising abilities by providing it with exclusive control of Olympic symbols and terminology in the United States, and established each National Governing Body as an independent entity. Prior to passage of the Act, the USOC had been little more than a travel agency concerned with assembling teams for the Olympic and Pan-American Games, outfitting them, and underwriting their travel. The Act, together with changes the USOC made in its own constitution, dramatically affected its role and efficiency. From quadrennial budgets of several million dollars in the 1960s, the USOC has blossomed into an organization that now has four-year budgets in the neighborhood of $500,000, and effectively supports the programs of the various NGBs and the needs of their Olympic team candidates.

From 1969 until early 1985, Colonel F Don Miller served as executive director. He was an exceptional leader and deserves a lion’s share of the credit for the changes that occurred during his term. When the IOC asked each National Olympic Committee to name its outstanding individual of the twentieth century, the USOC voted that honor to Colonel Miller. Apart from the progress the USOC achieved on his watch, he guided the organization through one of its most difficult periods. In January 1980, the Carter administration severely pressured the USOC to boycott that summer’s Olympic Games in Moscow because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. When a badly torn USOC finally capitulated, its income from corporate sponsorships and public contributions had nearly dried up, but Colonel Miller was able to keep the organization alive.

6 Tarnish on the gold

The Olympic Games have been prey to many factors that have tended to thwart their ideals of world cooperation and athletic excellence. Although officially only individuals win Olympic medals, nations routinely assign political significance to the feats of their citizens and teams, and national medal counts have become a fixture both in the press and by NOCs. That fact was most certainly behind the state-sponsored doping program instituted by East Germany,¹¹ and perhaps the Soviet Union, during the 1970s and 1980s, which led to a quick spread of doping to individual athletes in a broad range of sports and countries, both within the Games and in other competitions as well.¹² The IOC began a drug testing program at the 1968 Games in Mexico City under the direction of its own Medical Commission, and had only a single positive—for marijuana.

The first major drug scandal from the Games (setting aside the belated discovery of GDR’s program) occurred in 1988 when Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson tested positive for anabolic steroid use. The specter of drug cheats has haunted the Games and other major athletic competitions ever since.

7 Turning the tide—the World anti-doping Agency and the United States anti-doping Agency

Once the doping problem had been identified in the 1980s, a number of national anti-doping agencies were created, but there was no strong leadership from the IOC, and the efforts of the individual agencies was largely fragmented. It took a major scandal surrounding the 1998 Tour de France to finally launch a determined, coordinated worldwide effort to eliminate, or at least curtail, doping. The IOC decided to convene a world conference on doping, bringing together all stakeholders, which was conducted in Lausanne on February 2–4, 1999. The conference produced the Lausanne Declaration on Doping in Sport, which provided for the creation of an independent international anti-doping agency to be fully operational for the Games of the XXVII Olympiad in Sydney, Australia, in 2000. Thus was born the World anti-doping Agency (WADA) to promote and coordinate the fight against doping internationally. WADA was established as a foundation under the initiative of the IOC with the support and participation of intergovernmental organizations, governments, public authorities, and other public and private bodies involved w...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Prologue: an athlete’s perspective
• Acknowledgments
• List of abbreviations
• 1 The historical and scientific pathway to fair and accurate testing
• 2 Ensuring quality results in a global testing system
• 3 Anabolic-androgenic steroids: Historical background, physiology, typical use and side effects
• 4 Testing for anabolic agents
• 5 The art of ferreting out a designer steroid
• 6 Isotope ratio mass spectrometry: Carbon isotope ratio analysis
• 7 Stimulants, diuretics and masking of doping in sport
• 8 Erythropoietin doping: Detection in urine
• 9 Erythrocyte volume expansion and human performance
• 10 Growth hormone, secretogogues and related issues
• 11 Gene doping
• 12 Therapeutic gene use
• 13 Doping and its impact on the the healthy athlete
• 14 Conclusions