Winning at Any Cost: Doping in Olympic Sports

摘要

Since the beginning of the Olympic Games in Ancient Greece, athletes have sought competitive advantage through pharmacology. In the third century BC, Greek athletes ingested mushrooms in attempts to improve their performance. Egyptians ingested the ground rear hooves of the Abyssinian mule for its purported performance-enhancing properties. Roman gladiators took stimulants to overcome fatigue while fighting in the famed Circus Maximus (circa 600 BC). In the second half of the 20th century, pharmacological advances and enormous leaps in biomedical research have created an opportunity for performance enhancement previously unimagined. In their consuming ambition to win, many athletes are taking advantage of this knowledge, often encouraged to do so by coaches, trainers, team members and parents. For the athlete, the win brings worldwide visibility and claims to big bucks. But the pharmacological competitive advantage may in fact be fools' gold, since it threatens the athlete's health and sends damaging messages to our children. For sports governing bodies, tacit approval of performance-enhancing drugs places their credibility in jeopardy. For society itself, what is at stake is the integrity and meaning of sport and the future health and ethical values of a generation of children. This report is the result of two years of intensive research. To enhance its understanding of the biomedical aspects of performance-enhancing drug use in sport, the Commission formed a Technical Advisory Group (TAG).