Doping and sports - 1950-1954
1950
In 1950 the Larousse encyclopedique described the definition for 'dope', 'dopping' and 'doping' as:
"Taking stimulants or any substance that can significantly alter or enhance certain properties before attending an exam or sporting event."
The International Fencing Federation had established anti-doping rules in 1950.
1950
In the early 1950s the experimental use of new testosterone preparations began with the bodybuilders of the American West Coast. Photos from that time showed major changes in the short term of muscle mass among elite bodybuilders which is very suggestive for the use of anabolic steroids. Since then bodybuilding is strongly linked to that use, with Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947-) as the best known example.
1950
Pervitin was a popular doping product, particularly in endurance athletes. Its use was not yet prohibited, but it became a scandal when the coxed eight of Flörsheim-Rüsselsheim were beaten by the competitors of RV Köln 1877. Rüsselsheim accused sports physician Martin Brustmann (1885-1964) that he had given them green pills, which were actually sleeping pills, and that he provided Cologne with the right red that turned out to be Pervitin. Brtustmann was indicted and lost the trial, without RV Köln 1877 losing the win and the associated Olympic selection.
1950
The British football team Manchester United has been experimenting with doping. In 2004 in a radio interview with the BBC, former players Albert Scanlon (1935-2009) and Harry Gregg (1932-) confessed they had regularly used amphetamines in the 1950s.
1951
The International Amateur Boxing Federation had established anti-doping rules in 1951.
1951
Football team Honved Budapest toured Europe with some crowded stadiums as the team was considered the best team in the world. However rumors had it that amphetamines were involved.
1951
The stimulating effect of caffeine has been known for some time. In his trilogy 'Mr. Lincoln's Army: The Army of the Potomac' American historian and journalist Charles Bruce Catton (1899-1977) mentioned that a coffee ration kept the army going during the Civil War. That ration was more than enough for three or four daily cups of strong black coffee.
1952
Rumors circulated that some participants at the Helsinki Olympics would have used testosterone.
1952
During the Winter Olympics in Oslo there was great concern when Austrian sports doctor Ludwig Prokop (1920-2016) found empty ampoules and syringes in the changing rooms of the speed skaters. The situation became more disturbing when several speed skaters became ill due to excessive amphetamine use and needed medical care.
1952
German physician Albert Schweitzer (1875-1964) wrote about the country Gabon:
"After eating certain leaves or roots, the people of this country can toil all day without a feeling of hunger, thirst or fatigue, and yet they are happy and cheerful all the time."
1952
French doctor Pierre Dumas (1920-2000) came to the Tour de France for the first time in 1952. Dumas was a judoka and had no preconceptions to cycling. Yet he discovered a world of which he said:
"There were caretakers, say charlatans, who came from the Six Days, their value was in the contents of their bags, and the cyclists took everything they were served, even bee stings and toad extracts."
1952
French cyclist Paul Crouillere suddenly zigzagged across the road during the Ormesson criterion, collided with the wall of Choisy-le-Roi station and died on the spot. At the post-autopsy it turned out that he took the amphetamines Orthedrine and Maxiton.
1952
"Too many strange deaths!"
alerted journalist Jean Leulliot (1911-1982) in 'Road & Track' the day after the French amateur championship in Carcassonne:
"Jean-Claude Dielen, our little brave cyclist from the 'Nord de la Route de France' team, died on the road to Carcassonne, he drove the lead alone... and suddenly he left the straight line to sit with bent head under a plane tree at he edge of the road. This accident is not a real accident ... It is something else ... A few weeks ago, Paul Crouillères suddenly forgot to turn his wheel to drive to the station of Choisy -le-Roi and he also died ... Dielen and Crouillères died like many others. This must stop! ... ... We must try to find out why these guys had such strange reactions and why they died. Some people have been declaring for several weeks: "Most young cyclists use stimulants found in pharmacies that have names such as 'orthedine', 'maxiton', 'N63'. That is why it happens so often that these guys, who abuse these 'medicines', ultimately lose control of their bike and have surprising accidents ... We did not want to believe the respondents for a long time, but from the brief research we conducted it seems that they might tell the truth. .. And that is shocking!
1952
In June 1952 during the Tour of Switzerland Swiss rider Hugo Koblet (1925-1964) got an inflammation of the renal pelvis. Tour director Carl Senn wanted to keep his star at all costs in the race and asked the doctor
"Make Koblet fit, à tout prix."
Against his will and beyond his knowledge, Koblet was given an injection of amphetamines. Afterwards Koblet announced his opinion about doping:
"One day comes the man with the hammer and with a pill you try to postpone this impasse. That's how it starts and usually it ends up in great misery."
The results of Koblet began to slack and in 1958 he stopped racing. Six years later, at the age of 39, he died in a car accident. Presumably he had committed suicide because he was no longer sporting, he was financially on the ground and because of his many adventures with other women his wife had left him.
1953
Raymond le Bert, the caretaker of French tour winner Louison Bobet (1925-1983), stated that he had 'helped' other athletes with his famous 'petit bidon', Roger Piantoni (1931-) (photo), among others, who played football at Stade the Reims and the French national team. The mixture consisted of cocaine, caffeine and quinine.
1953
Canadian weightlifter Doug Hepburn (1926-2000) suddenly managed incredible world records. Turned out he was treated with anabolic steroids to strengthen his weak leg muscles affected by polio.
1954
In its report, the Fédération Internationale de Médecine du Sport regretted that only a few sports federations had included the doping ban into their statutes.
1954
The use of stimulants, especially amphetamines, gradually changed into addiction. There were 550,000 chronic users in Japan and two million former consumers. But also the United States and Europe, with Sweden in the lead, scored very high.
1954
In July 1954 the German national football team wrote history, the World Cup final was also called the 'miracle of Bern'. In the preliminary round, the Hungarians had beaten the Germans 8-3 and in the final they were leading 2-0 after eight minutes. But the Mannschaft came back and won by 3-2.
Soon, however, rumors about doping circulated. Attacker Helmut Rahn (1929-2003) had toured South America with his club Rot-Weiß Essen just before the World Cup and returned with fantastic doping stories. He was able to convince trainer Sepp Herberger (1897-1977) to start with it too. The German coach in turn spoke to team physician Franz Loogen (1919-2010) who initially refused, but eventually gave in to the please at the World Cup. Former footballer Herbert Ehrhardt (1930-2010) quoted Loogen's introductory pep talk in 2003:
"When rats get these vitamins injected, they can swim longer in the water."
Fritz Walter (1920-2002), Otmar Walter (1924-2013), Helmut Rahn (1929-2003), Werner Liebrich (1927-1995), Werner Kohlmeyer (1924-1974), Heinz Kubsch (1930-1993), Max Morlock (1925-1994), Toni Turek (1919-1984), Josef Posipal (1927-1997) and Karl Mai (1928-1993) agreed immediately and were very enthousiastic about the injections. Goalkeeper Heinrich Kwiatkowski (1926-2008) refused and was therefore not allowed to participate in the final. The substances that were injected were never known, but it is suspected that it was certainly not Vitamin C, but rather Pervitin.
In 1957, Hungarian captain Ferenc Puskas (1938-2006) reported that he saw siringues in the German dressing room in 1954 during the rest of the final between Germany and Hungary and that he suspected that the opponent might have doped. Little attention was paid to the accusations of Puskas, but the German Football Federation gave him a stadium ban for all matches in Germany, which was only lifted in 1964. Walter Broennimann, the stadium superintendent of Bern, confirmed the story of Puskas in 2004. When cleaning the locker room, he found empty ampoules under the drainage grates and handed them over to the Swiss food company Wander for analysis. He was asked to keep this quiet. After Puskas's statements, team physician Franz Loogen (1919-2010) admitted the injections at the end of 1957, but stated it was grape sugar and in 2004 his story suddenly changed to vitamin C. However, the suspicions of amphetamine use persisted.
The German press later came back to the story. In 1995, it was reported that only five of the eleven Hungarian finalists from 1954 were still alive. Six players had died at an average age of 55.5 years, three from a heart attack, two from cancer and one from a cerebral haemorrhage. What could be the cause of this, the German press wondered. Either the Hungarian players were even more 'loaded' than the Germans, or top-level football is particularly harmful. But also the German players were not spared. Eight had serious health problems, Fritz Walter (1920-2002), Helmut Rahn (1929-2003), Heinz Kubsch (1930-1993) and Max Morlock (1925-1994) got hepatitis. Most of the sick players were offered a health cure in Bad Mergentheim from the German Football Association and healed. Richard Hermann (1923-1962) did not participate and died eight years after the World Cup of liver cirrhosis. When it became known that trainer Sepp Herberger (1897-1977) took care of the widow and sons of Hermann, the German Football Association asked him to stop in order not to set a precedent. A few years later, the family received 3 000 Deutsche Mark from the German Football Association.
Werner Kohlmeyer (1924-1974) and Toni Turek (1919-1984) died from the consequences of heart failure, Werner Liebrich (1927-1995) from liver failure and Karl Mai (1928-1993) from the effects of hepatitis C. Apparently, Franz Loogen had used the same syringe with every player. Goalkeeper Fritz Herkenrath (1928-2016) arrived already with every player at intensive care with hepattisand later stated:
"The doctor briefly immersed the syringe in hot water, that was all."
In 2004, Albert Sing (1917-2008), on that conscious WC assistant trainer under Sepp Herberger, gave away that team physician Frans Loogen had injected reinforcing injections:
"So far I have been silent, but I am now 87 and I want to talk about it."
1954
In his daily newspaper 'Het Nieuwsblad', Belgian sports journalist Willem van Wijndaele (1908-1973) wrote the following about a individual pursuit contest:
"Before his contest against the big favorite, he was in a miserable state, his fiery eyes lay deep in his face, constantly trying to moisten his dry lips with his tongue, which were clear signs that no physician could oversee, we all knew he had taken something, I pointed out several colleagues to the guy's condition, surrounded by caretakers, journalists and managers who did not want to miss the spectacle, one of them shouted: 'Do not light a cigarette, there could be an explosion'."
1954
After his career, which lasted from 1938 to 1953, well-known cyclist Walter Diggelmann (1915-1999) admitted his amphetamines use. The Swiss was an all-round man, he raced road races, was a strong climber, but was also active in six days and as a stayer. He won stages in the Tour de Romandie, the Tour de Suisse and the Tour de France. Together with compatriot Hugo Koblet (1925-1964), he won the six days of Chicago in 1948, the year after that the one of New York. It was known that he always had 'Pilleli' in his pocket, which were packed in plastic bags. Thirty kilometers before the arrival he took a number, the amount was dependent on the shape. When he passed by as a jet engine during the Tour de Suisse, a few riders called after him
"Did you take them again?"
on which Diggelmann pulled out a bag of three pills, waved it and shouted triumphantly:
"I do not even need them today. ! "
1954
When the dominance of the Soviet Union started in weightlifting, a Russian team doctor, after too many alcoholic beverages, told his American colleague Doctor John Ziegler (1920-1983) that his athletes had been injected with testosterone during the Vienna World Championships. Upon his return to the United States, Ziegler started a refined synthesis technique that would make a connection with the muscle building benefits of testosterone, without its androgenic side effects, such as enlargement of the prostate.
He administered himself, the American trainer Bob Hoffman (1917-2005) and the weightlifters Jim Park (1927-2007) and Yaz Kuzuhara (1920-2012) low doses of testosterone. In all three, body weight and strength increased, more than a training program could ever have produced. But there were also side effects. Ziegler then looked for a remedy without side effects and found methandrostenolone, (Dianabol), an anabolic steroid that Ciba would market in the United States in 1958. The results were so good that an increasing number of weightlifters started using steroids.
1954
The German sports physician Herbert Reindell (1908-1990) wrote the contribution 'Wirkung von Dopingmitteln on the Kreislauf und die körperliche Leistung', which he published only from 1959 onwards. Years later it came out that he had falsified or concealed a lot of data. For example, he omitted the warnings from the work of the young doctor Oskar Wegener about the side effects of caffeine, veriazole, strychnine and pervitin in healthy athletes. Reindell predicted that higher doses would yield even better performance, with Pervitine even up to 23.5%
