Anabolic steroids at the 1972 Olympics!

Coach and Athletic Director, Oct, 2006 by Jay L. Silvester

The Olympic Games is the showcase for the amateur athletes of the world. Historically, its purpose is to foster the brotherhood of man through friendly competition.

The 1972 Olympics was hardly an overwhelming success in this respect. It was plagued by unprecedented political pestilences: The ousting of Southern Rhodesia, a series of obviously erroneous judging decisions, and vicious murder by Arab terrorists.

These were the problems everyone saw. Several others, below the surface, also created serious controversy.

The use of drugs was one, particularly anabolic steroids. Having been involved in two studies on these drugs, I became interested in ascertaining the extent of their use by Olympic track and field athletes, and the athletes' knowledge and attitudes toward them.

The accompanying questionnaire was devised with these thoughts in mind. As you can see, I did not ask the athlete to name specific drug or dosage he was utilizing. But I did follow up on this after the questionnaire was completed.

As a result of these discussions, I can report that far and away the favorite anabolic steroid proved to be Dianabol or Methandrostanelone. The dosage was very inconsistent, varying from 10 mg per day to as high as 100 mg per day by one athlete. The most used by any other athlete was 50 mg per day over a four-week period.

Returns were received from athletes from eight countries, namely: U.S., Russia, Egypt, New Zealand, Canada, Morocco, and England.

68% of these athletes admitted to having used anabolic steroids, with 61% having used them within six months of the Olympic Games--a rather trenchant statistic in view of the International Amateur Athletic Federation taboo on the use of anabolic steroids.

Why do so many athletes break the rules? What is the attraction of the anabolic steroid? I believe there are three basic reasons:

First, the one that athletes give is that steroid usage is so widespread that they feel they must take them to stay even with the competition.

Second, the detection of steroids is very difficult and expensive. A single test costs about $1,000, and you need a series of them to establish whether the individual is actually using them.

Third, and perhaps most causative, is that the athletes generally feel that steroids d o enhance their ability, particularly in the so-called strength-type events, although athletes in other events also feel they improve performance.

To facilitate a comparison between events, the athletes were asked to designate themselves as (1) throwers, (2) jumpers or pole vaulters, (3) sprinters, including the 400-meter hurdles, or (4) middle-distance runners, from 800 meters through 3,000-meter steeplechase. The questionnaire excluded distance runners.

The answers to the questions have been broken down by percentages in the accompanying chart. Some of these answers hold particular significance.

Question 3: "Ethically, do you approve of anabolic steroid usage in sport?

Research indicated that anabolic steroids enable a person to gain strength at a faster rate than the nonuser can. I believe that this is true. The use of steroids is, therefore, a form of cheating, enabling you to do more than you otherwise could.

Although this is ethically indefensible, 45% of the respondents disagreed with me. They more or less compared the use of anabolic steroids to taking vitamin pills.

Question 7: A majority of the athletes (65%) felt that the steroids had a positive influence on their performance. And when an athlete believes that something works to his advantage, he will quite likely use it, assuming it is available.

Questions 9-10: Studies on the effect of anabolic steroids on strength are not entirely in agreement. Interestingly, a large majority (84%) of the respondents believe that steroids decrease the time it takes to gain a certain level of strength. 52% feel that anabolic steroids enable a person to become stronger than he could otherwise become.

Question 15: Bob Richards once told me that no good athlete ever undertrains; he usually overtrains. I tend to agree with him. All good athletes are in excellent physical condition.

The big question involves the mind. How can we get the most out of the athlete at the critical moment? 68% of the respondents believe that anabolic steroids will enable them to perform better. And this kind of faith can tend to improve mental attitude.

Question 16: Does steroid usage affect other body functions? The possibility of side effects is of major interest. Medical people suggest that many changes are possible. Some athletes say they have more pain while on steroids, others claim that they heal faster from injuries when taking the drug.

Following are the answers to the questions (increase, decrease, no change):

                  Inc.  Dec.  No. Ch.

Urine production  16     0    84
Sexual activity   19    19    62
Body hair         16     0    84
Low back pain     10    16    74
Joint pain        19    13    68

Question 20: Is it difficult to obtain anabolic steroids? I realize that the word difficult does not hold the same meaning for everyone. However, 614 of the athletes did not believe it was difficult to obtain such drugs.