The desire to compete — and win — is as old as history itself. From the beginnings of sport, athletes have sought out foods and potions to turn their bodies into winning machines. As early as 776 BCE, the very first Olympic games, there are records of attempts to increase testosterone levels (“Steroid Abuse in Sports”). Ancient Greek wrestlers ate vast amounts of meat to gain muscle mass, and Norse “Berserker” warriors took hallucinogenic mushrooms before battle. The first competitive athletes to be charged for doping, however, were swimmers in 1860s Amsterdam. Doping of all kinds, from caffeine to cocaine to anabolics quickly spread to other sports (“Anabolic Steroids, a Brief History”). Artificial testosterone was first synthesized in 1935 and was intended as a hormone replacement for patients who were not able to produce enough testosterone. The first documented incidence of steroid abuse in sports was at the 1954 World Weightlifting Championships. The Soviets easily dominated all of their weight classes, so Dr. John Ziegler of the US team questioned the Soviet doctor about steroids. The Soviet doctor was not afraid to admit that his athletes were injected with testosterone, and because there were no regulations in place to address the issue, they went unpenalized for their actions. Thus, Dr. Ziegler set out to create an oral testosterone derivative, superior to the Soviet injectable version, and his effort led to the creation of Dianabol in 1958, the most commonly abused anabolic of all time. (“Steroid Abuse in Sports”, “Steroid Timeline”). Steroids thrived in the Olympics in the 1960s and early ‘70s. Finally, in 1975, the International Olympic Committee imposed a ban on steroids. This, however, did not stop the athletes.... ... middle of paper ... ....html>. "Anti-Doping Initiatives." Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. The Vanco uver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, 2010. Web. 04 Mar. 2010. . "Steroid Abuse in Sports." Association Against Steroid Abuse. Web. 04 Mar. 2010. . "Steroid Timeline." Steroids in Baseball. Ed. Allan Doherty. 2009. Web. 03 Mar. 2010. . "Use of Steroids in Olympic Sports." E-SportAZone. 19 Sept. 2009. Web. 04 Mar. 2010. . "Youth Steroid Use." Kidproof. 2010. Web. 03 Mar. 2010. .
Anabolic steroids have become an epidemic amongst athletes since the 1950's when a Swiss company by the name of Ciba Pharmaceuticals introduced what was to become the most popular anabolic drug for athletes called methandrostenolone. “By this time, the era of the steroid athlete was well underway and world records were being shattered and re-shattered with remarkable regularity.” (Oklobdzija & Weyrauch, 1989, para 3) From then on, there have been many cases throughout professional sports where athletes are reported or caught using anabolic steroids.
Throughout the history of athletics, athletes have searched for ways to make themselves better, faster, and stronger. Steroid use is one of the most popular choices among these athletes. Steroids are synthetic hormones that produce specific physiological effects on one's body and have been used since the 1930s (Center for Substance Abuse Research). Although the German Scientists who discovered steroids did not intend to use it for body building or to create better athletes, steroid use has developed into a controversial subject concerning the health of users and other moral issues. The use of steroids in athletics is physically and morally wrong because it essentially promotes the deterioration of the health of athletes and unfair competition among these athletes.
John Ziegler didn’t want Russia to be winning all these competition, so he started prescribing steroids for his weight lifting friends in the U.S. Under Dr. Zeigler’s company he formed a popular steroid in which is still used today called Dianabo, but is now known a methandrostenolone. Methandrostenolone, also known as metandienone, methandienone, or informally as dianabol, is an orally-effective anabolic steroid originally developed in Germany and released in the US in the early 1960s by Ciba Specialty Chemicals. Although Dr. Zeigler had a major impact on the athletes use of steroids, he soon realized the harm of these drugs and soon turned against them. Of course steroids aren’t the only performance enhancing drugs. Other popular PED’s include; amphetamines, testosterone, human growth hormone, illegal blood transfusions and erythropoietin. All above listed drugs are banned in all countries and all have a different effect on people. Although one thing these drugs do have in common is they can all have major negative health effects on human beings. All in all, athletes use of performance enhancement drugs is continuing to grow and if not taken control of will get out of
Steroids have a surprisingly long and interesting history. Although steroids did not become popular until the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, they were around for a long time before that. In the 1930’s, anabolic steroids were developed to treat anemia and other muscle-wasting diseases. But it was not until 1954 that anabolic steroids began to appear in athletic competition when Soviet weightlifters supposedly used them at the World Championships. In 1958, a doctor by the name of John Ziegler developed Dianabol; the first mass produced anabolic steroid, with the help of a Pharmaceutical company, and in 1960 distributed Dianabol to the U.S. weightlifting team. The IOC (International Olympic Committee) banned the use of anabolic steroids in 1974, just 7 years after it hired a medical commission to perform drug tests on athletes. Two years after the ban by the IOC, eight athletes were disqualified from the Montreal Olympics after testing positive for steroids. The NFL started ...
Throughout the years, and with technology advancing so quickly, it's pretty safe to say steroids have come a long way from where they started. Dating back to the original olympic games, athletes were known for ingesting animal testicles before competitions for bettering their performances. While this doesn't happen today, many athletes still do use anabolic steroids for enhancing their game, just in a much more humane way. Even though steroids are mostly known for their misuse in sports competitions, they also have many other beneficial uses as well, like treating a variety of inflammatory diseases, transitioning transgender people, arthritis, asthma, skin conditions and even some forms of cancer.
Steroids became an option to athletes in the Olympics and other major sporting events during the 1950’s. But this use of steroids among athletes only became widely apparent when Canadian sprint runner Ben Johnson tested positive for steroid use after winning the gold medal for the one hundred-meter dash during the 1988 Olympics (Francis, 45). Now a skinny fifteen-year-old can just walk down to the local gym and find people who either sell or know how to get in contact with those who sell the drug that will make him envious of his friends. Steroids are an attractive drug. While steroids seem harmless to the unaware user, they can have a risky effect. Most of the time whether the users are new or experienced, they do not know the dangerous consequences steroids can have on their bodies and their minds. Though steroids cause a relatively insignificant number of deaths in our society, the banning of steroids is justified because steroids have a lot of side effects not known to the uninformed user.
Anabolic Steroid is a synthetic version of the male hormone. Anabolic Steroid was first created in the early 1930s by scientist to help treat males with low amount of hormones. During World War II the artificial form of testosterone was used to help malnourished soldiers to gain weight and improve performance (Center for Substance Abuse Research, 2013). After the war ended, athletes started to use steroids when they entered competitions. In the 1956 Olympics, Soviet athletes were performing at high levels. After learning about the athletes, American Physician, Dr. Zeigler, created a more selective form of anabolic steroid (CESAR, 2013). After a more selective form of anabolic steroids were created, steroids became popular among Olympic, Professional,
Steroids have been around for a long time. “The first people to use anabolic steroids for athletic enhancement were the Russians who discovered the drug and had great success.” They stared to use the steroids in the 1950’s. The steroids they used had many side effects. When they started to use them, they had a high chance to die of heart disease and many other things. During the Olympics in 1950 and a little beyond the Russians were know as the best weight lifters in the world. No one knew that they used steroids. After a while, their secret was out and the Bulgarians started to use them.
For many years steroids have been known as a substance to help bodies get bigger. Steroids were brought to America in the late 1950’s when Russia was dominating in weight lifting competitions, and one night the Russian coach got drunk and told the American coach how to make it. The American coach came back and found a way to make it more powerful. In 1988 at the Summer Olympics is when steroids became recognized by the sports world when Ben Johnson, an Olympic runner was tested a few days after winning the gold he tested positive for steroids (Monroe). Steroids were invented to help the muscles in the body grow at a faster rate. Many people back then did not think about the side effects of steroids people would take them without giving it a second thought. It was not till later when people started figuring out that steroids were hurting your body in the long run. Now everyone knows the conse...
Steroids have been debated and studied since they were first synthesized in the 1940’s by the Soviet Union (Connolly 2001). Scientists in the Soviet Union were looking for a way to gain a competitive edge in the Olympic games. Some athletes were outraged that other athletes were using such means, while others joined in on the doping (taking anabolic steroids) to even the playing field. During the 1960’s, a number of deaths occured in the competitive sports world from the use of stimulants (Savulescu 2013). This lead the International Olympic Committee to establish a
People have always been naturally competitive. As long as sports have been in existence, competitors have done all that they can in order to try and be the best. In the early days, there wasn’t much awareness of the dangers of steroids. While in the 1860’s, a group of swimmers in Amsterdam got caught with taking drugs to speed up their races, because back then, steroids weren’t illegal yet. (“History of Steroid Use”). In 1935, testosterone was first synthesized; thus in the 1940’s, testosterone was used in sports, but the dangers were not clear In 1964,due to the fact that steroids were banned in sports, the International Olympic Committee published its first list of banned drugs for athletes. This is one long run-on. During the 1970's, demand for steroids grew very largely as they became more popular among athletic competitors. (“History of Steroid Use.”). It’s this popularity that made steroids become such a large, immediate
Today, drug use in sport has reached enormous proportions in society and is destroying athletics from the ground up. Nowhere is the problem more serious than in professional athletics, where athletes, coaches and trainers misuse drugs in search of ways of ways to improve performance. Many athletes fail to take their time when making the decision whether to use drugs to their advantage. Unfortunately athletes may use drugs for therapeutic indications, recreatio9nal or social reasons, as muscular aids or to mask the presence of other drugs during drug testing. But the safety of the athlete's health is being neglected. Drug use has led to an increased number of deaths and suspensions of athletes. Also, if this continues all athletes someday will have to choose whether to compete at a world-class level and take drugs, or compete at a club level and be clean. In sports, athletes, coaches and trainers will try their best to find a way to reach the top level. They not only search for a way to enhance performance...
Doping is a practice that has been going on since the time of "ancient Greek athletes, who supposedly ate herbs, sesame seeds, dried figs, and mushrooms for this purpose" (Hoberman, 1992, 104). Likewise, athletes have readily consumed such drugs as caffeine and alcohol to improve performa...
Drug use in sports is considered cheating. Doping has many historical backgrounds, but now it is on a larger scale in order to maximiz...
The usage of performance-enhancing drugs in sports is commonly known as Doping. Doping is banned worldwide in every sports administration and competitions and doping gives an unfair advantage to those using illegal substances, such as steroids to boost their performance. It also puts at stake the integrity of those athletes who do not use performance-enhancing drugs also known as “clean” athletes. In fact it seems that we’re now entering the era of performance-enhancing drugs within professional sports. Doping rids the true athletes of what they truly deserve and is wrong; because why should those who put in a hundred per cent of their effort, be outshone by individuals who are choosing to use substances to enhance their physical and mental abilities? Doping damages the sports industry as a whole because it has a serious physical and mental effects on the athletes, as well as damaging the idea of sportsmanship and it also breaks the trust of the fans, as they realise their idols are hypocrites.