To: average joe who wrote (7286 ) 6/21/2009 1:59:54 PM From: E. Charters Read Replies (2) | Respond to "Juice" started in the modern Olympics just after the turn of the century. (But there are records of usage in the Greek Classical age, which led to the demise of the Olympics in that era is is said) A US track team member, Thomas Hicks was caught using strychnine and brandy in 1904. It is said that in the 1936 Olympics the US track team was using caffeine and ephedrine, the combination of which is a strong stimulant. This might help explain their startling performance in that competition, although they were routinely held out as the best in general since the 1920's. A cyclist in the 1960 Olympics died from the use of amphetamines. It was not until 1967 that the Olympic committee banned performance enhancing drugs, but by that time they had become commonplace. In strength and sprint events it was said you could not win without them. In Canada Lloyd Percival enhanced the cult of drugs, giving them out like so many party jellybeans to CDN track team members. There is widespread use of n-acetyl-cysteine and niacin to clean out the system prior to drug testing, and some of these methods are reputed to work. Athletes in the past just stopped using steroids about 3 months prior to a major competition where dope testing was to take place and went into a flushing regime. This was good enough in the old days, but not sufficient for the latter day, more sensitive tests. To date, since 1960 there have been over 200 athletes banned by drug testing, many of them from the Eastern Block countries before the fall of the Soviet Onion. These countries were obviously operating and athletic drug cult for propaganda purposes. (This is not to say their dedication, training methods and athletic clubs/"farm teams", so to speak, were not state of the art. Coming from a sport culture where I was familiar with the athletes of several Olympic sports in Canada, I can testify to that.)
