When doping in sports was expected and celebrated

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The morning of August 30, 1904, dawned hot and humid in St. Louis, Missouri. The United States was hosting its first Olympic Games, and it was as if an oppressive blanket had been lowered over the Missis­sippi River town for a signature event, the marathon. Fourteen miles into the 24.85-mile run (the 26.2-mile standard was not established until 1908), runner Charles Hicks—British-born but representing the United States—doubled over on the side of a road in what a Brooklyn Daily Eagle reporter called “sweltering heat and clouds of dust.”

• This article is an extract from Spitting in the Soup: Inside the Dirty Game of Doping in Sports by Mark Johnson, used with permission of VeloPress. Learn more at http://ift.tt/2agUVSZ. 
• 10 steps to becoming a fitter, faster, better cyclist

Along with the swampy conditions, Hicks and 31 other runners dodged a torture trail of unpaved roads and ankle-twisting rocks. Dust accumulated in powdery pools so deep it swallowed the runners’ shoes. There was one water stop—a well 12 miles into the course. Farm dogs added misery. A pack of snarling canines chased a black South African competitor off course.

Meanwhile, running in cutoff trousers and street shoes, the race’s sole Cuban, a mail carrier named Félix Carvajal, scrounged fruit from an orchard along the way. The Cuban promptly puked up a gut full of pulp. In these conditions, turning to modern medicine was logical; refusing to offer it would have been ethically shocking.

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A physician and Olympic chronicler named Charles Lucas trailed the 5-foot 6-inch, 133-pound Hicks in one of 20 race follow cars. While two of these support vehicles ended up flipped over in roadside ditches, the remaining parade kicked up so much dirt that runners had to peri­odically stop to hack their lungs free of crud.

Press reports describe a California competitor named William Garcia found “lying unconscious by the roadside several miles from the stadium.” Garcia collapsed from a dust-induced stomach hemorrhage. As for Hicks, Lucas felt his charge was not the favorite. “There were three other men in the race who were better runners than Hicks, and who should have defeated him,” the doc­tor noted. “But they lacked proper care on the road.”

“Proper care” meant drugs. When Hicks hit the wall 10 miles from the finish, he begged for water. Hicks’s Boston-based trainer, a football coach named Hugh C. McGrath, was in the car with Lucas. Hewing to cutting-edge fitness doctrines of the day, McGrath and Lucas denied the dehydrated Hicks’s pleas for water. Instead, they furthered his torture by sponging his mouth with distilled water.

Though we know it as a rat killer, strychnine was a common endur­ance sports drug at the turn of the 20th century

Stolen glory

The position of the authorities was clear: taking an assist from chemical stimulants was commitment, a heroic glorification of country

Pedaling for cash

Before the spread of trains and telegraphs, sports lacked the standardized rules and regulations we take for granted today

The bike racing boom

Given so many paying and wagering fans, stars took home astro­nomical sums

The growth of road racing

Cycling did not operate under the disap­proving glare of paternalistic anti-doping agencies and morally outraged fans

Go-slow doping

Needle doctors

Trainers would sometimes drill holes in a horse’s leg, pour in toxins, then hide the drug-stuffed cavity with leg wrappings

Cycling records

We want you to dope them all. We want them all to go fast

A working class sport

At the same time that cycling was taking off as a profession, cocaine was mixed with all manner of popular drinks

Peruvian tea

Christison had plenty of good to say about the drug’s enhancing powers

Doping becomes "ergogenic aids"

Karpovich’s publications capture the striking lack of moral hysteria regarding drugs in sport

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