The history of the use of steroids in sports since the 1950s
The year wasand U. With a whopping 61 homers in a single season, no one from any team had come within striking distance of his illustrious feat — until now. With each game, the counts grew higher. McGwire finally claimed the record on September 8th,as he hit his 62nd slam.
However, by the s, their use had entered sports. Athletes all over the world were using steroids to improve their performance in sports, and even in the Olympics.
But during the early s, athletes had started abusing steroids so much that in the Olympics, 10 athletes were disqualified from taking part in any event.
Steroids are used in sports mainly to enhance the performance of athletes. Generally, the steroids used in sports are anabolic ones. Such steroids are used by both amateur and professional athletes.
Many steroids originated from testosterone — a male hormone. Medically, the steroids which are derived from this hormone are used for curative reasons.
That is why steroids have been in use since much before they were discovered as ergogenic drugs. However, testosterone is not the only hormone that can improve performance.
The early years Testosterone is produced naturally in the body of any animal. It creates alertness and aggressiveness to improve performance.
The History of Drug Use in Sports
That is why early athletes used to take some form of medication to boost the production of testosterone in their body.
The aborigines of Australia used to chew Pituri plants for this, early Norse warriors used to eat hallucinogenic mushrooms, and ancient Mayans used cocoa to enhance their abilities. The people of ancient Greece had a more gruesome tradition, however.
Before any competition, some athletes used to chew raw animal testicles.
| Cause of Steroid Use | As long as we have had sports to compete in, athletes have tried all kinds of things to be the best. |
If that was unavailable, they also used to eat sesame seeds to boost their performance. There were other similar traditions all over the world for enhancing performance.
The need for winning competitions can be extremely powerful. The first modern experiment done on testosterone was by a German zoologist and physiologist Arnold Adolph Berthold. His experiments were based on removing and transplanting the testicles of cockerels.
Later, inAdolf Butenandt, a chemist from Germany, extracted the hormone androsterone from urine and purified it. After this, research on steroids started in full-fledge all over the world.
Steroids in Professional Sports: An Overview
A few years later, inButenandt, along with another chemist, Dr. Leopold Ruzicka, created the first synthetic testosterone. This discovery won them the Nobel Prize in chemistry in the year Byhumans had already received testosterone-propionate injections, and steroids had entered athletics in the Soviet Union.
Such was the power of these chemicals, that the Soviet Union gained dominance over the entire sports world. Byanother steroid called Dianabol had been approved for use by humans.
After this, the use of steroids became widespread in sports as well as athletics.
The History of Drug Use in Sports Despite the media attention today’s athletes receive when they choose to supplement exercise and a healthy diet with steroid use, these trends are anything but new. The facts, as gleaned from the hearing's transcripts, show rampant use of amphetamines, anabolic steroids, and other drugs across sports and at . s - Athletes Begin Taking Amphetamines Used by Soldiers in WWII "The first 'effective' performance enhancing drugs, the amphetamines, which were used widely by soldiers in the Second World War, crossed over into sports in the early s.
By the s, innumerable new steroids had been developed and used by humans, and by the s, steroids were freely available in local medical stores. Notably, majority of research on such steroids was carried out in Germany.
What are anabolic steroids? Also known as anabolic-androgenic steroids or AAS, anabolic steroids are drugs that can produce effects similar to testosterone in the human body.
They have the ability to increase lean muscle mass by building muscle tissue because they act like natural body hormones. They can increase the level of proteins inside cells and in skeletal muscles.
SportsRec is the #1 source for all things sports! Choose from a category below.
They can also reinforce and maintain male characteristics like growth of body hair and testicles. These drugs can also increase vigor and attentiveness in athletes, which contributes to an improvement in their sports performance.Baseball History in the s.
M.L. Rose. Created with Sketch. Cardio. Created with Sketch. Sports. Created with Sketch. As such, steroids such as testosterone shots and the illegal use of anabolic steroids became common to promote muscle building, which in turn increased strength and ability, especially in relation to being at bat and.
As time passed since the Anabolic Steroid Control Act, the use of anabolic steroids among the population only increased, and the legislation of anabolic steroids created a massive new lucrative spot in the black market for the buying and selling of anabolic steroids.
s - Athletes Begin Taking Amphetamines Used by Soldiers in WWII "The first 'effective' performance enhancing drugs, the amphetamines, which were used widely by soldiers in the Second World War, crossed over into sports in the early s. History of Anabolic Steroids.
Steroids in Sports - A timeline and history of Steroid Usage in Sports
Since their creation in the early ’s, steroids have been praised for their effectiveness by users, debated over their safety by medical professionals, outlawed by sport governing bodies, made illegal by governments and demonized by the press and public opinion.
As time passed since the Anabolic Steroid Control Act, the use of anabolic steroids among the population only increased, and the legislation of anabolic steroids created a massive new lucrative spot in the black market for the buying and selling of anabolic steroids.
The facts, as gleaned from the hearing's transcripts, show rampant use of amphetamines, anabolic steroids, and other drugs across sports and at .
