Drug Games: The International Olympic Committee and the Politics of Doping, 1960-2008
On August 26, 1960, twenty-three-year-old Danish cyclist Knud Jensen, competing in that year’s Rome Olympic Games, suddenly fell from his bike and fractured his skull. His death hours later led to rumors that performance-enhancing drugs were in his system. Though certainly not the first instance of doping in the Olympic Games, Jensen’s death serves as […]
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University of Texas Professor Explores Cultural Phenomenon of Doping
An expert on sports doping living in Austin wants to help guide cycling’s future and it’s not the guy who raced a bike for a living.
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Smack Epidemic: How Painkillers Are Turning Young Athletes into Heroin Addicts
It is, by any measure, an epidemic. Heroin is not new or chic, but its use and abuse are spiking. According to data from the CDC and the National Center for Health Statistics, heroin-overdose deaths rose gradually from 2000 to ’10 but then almost tripled in the following three years to 2.7 deaths per 100,000 […]
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Sports Genes
Who has the speed gene, and who doesn’t? How much of performance is genetic? How did early humans become athletes? And can the Perfect Athlete be genetically engineered?
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Stick Route
IT’S BEEN A WEEKLY — and sometimes daily — headline in Dallas: Tony Romo Gets Pain-Killing Injection. Ever since he fractured a rib during a Week 2 win over the 49ers, Romo’s pregame shots have been news, mostly because he plays QB for America’s Team and partly because he’s a reality show waiting to happen. […]
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NFL and Pain: League Zeros in on One Pain Medication
Toradol, the players’ drug of choice, carries high risks but may soon be banned. During a 13-season NFL career, defensive tackle Warren Sapp cherished those days he was close to pain-free, those games he could race onto the field with nothing but adrenaline pumping through his veins. “I was in the trenches, boss, with contact […]
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Football’s Hidden Pains
This weekend offered two of the best football games of the year, both of which I watched, though turning on the television for Sunday’s games was slightly harder after reading Dan Le Batard’s account of Jason Taylor’s fifteen painful years in the N.F.L., in the Miami Herald. Among the grotesqueries: Needles in the bottom of […]
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For Young Athletes, Good Reasons to Break the Fast-Food Habit
When I ran high school cross-country 14 years ago, the bus that took us to meets always stopped at a Wendy’s or McDonald’s after the event. Most of the team would order some variation of burgers, fries and a big soda. It was fast, easy and satisfying. Things haven’t changed much for young athletes, according […]
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Derek Boogaard: A Boy Learns to Brawl
Derek Boogaard was scared. He did not know whom he would fight, just that he must. Opportunity and obligation had collided, the way they can in hockey. His father bought a program the night before. Boogaard scanned the roster, checking heights and weights. He later recalled that he barely slept.
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Doctors Turn on No 10 Over Failure to Curb Obesity Surge
Major food and drinks firms fuel crisis with irresponsible marketing, claim doctors, who call for ban on fast-food sponsorship deals. The body that represents every doctor in the country has launched an unprecedented attack on the coalition government’s failed strategy to tackle an obesity epidemic in the UK.
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Faster, Stronger – and High
The development of genetic enhancement in animals has led to fears that ‘gene doping’ could be abused by athletes. Meet Marathon Mouse. The rodent genetically engineered in the US can run 5km nonstop on a treadmill, compared with an average of 0.2km in its wild cousins.
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Concern Raised Over Pain killer Use in Sports
When Mets pitcher R. A. Dickey partly tore the plantar fascia in his right foot last May, he turned to a treatment that in recent years has become a go-to elixir for professional baseball and football players: Toradol, an injectable anti-inflammatory drug. ”It certainly helped, especially in the first months after the injury,” said Dickey, […]
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Cortisone: Is it Worth the Shot?
Key Points: 1) Shots help ease pain, 2) Short-term benefit for sure; long-term effects uncertain, 3) General rule is no more than three or four a year
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Looking Upstream in Doping Cases
The case against Lance Armstrong by antidoping officials detailed how Armstrong, as the leader of his professional cycling team, used performance-enhancing drugs over many years to fuel his run as a seven-time Tour de France champion. It detailed the lengths that many teammates, trainers, doctors and other associates went to enable him to pull off […]
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Putin’s Run for Gold
At $50 billion and counting, the 2014 Winter Olympics, in Sochi, will be the most expensive Olympic Games ever. Intended to showcase the power of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, they may instead highlight its problems: organized crime, state corruption, and the terrorist threat within its borders.
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