Apologies, as this thread is inevitably turning into the "(Olympic) doping in the US (60s-80s)" thread.
To summarize some of the above, we have:
- institutionalized doping with political consent (Amateur Sports Act) overseen by USOC
- internal testing from USOC
- docs and physiologists doping athletes under the umbrella of 'health care' and 'sports science'
- 'independent' investigations that are everything except independent
- the narrative of 'good anglophones' vs. 'evil (eastern) europeans'
Funny to see how much of the stuff that was going on back then turns out to have been merely some sort of prequel to the stuff we've seen in the 90s and 2000s up to present.
Basically it's SSDD.
The following is a very strong piece from 2016 centered around the 1983 Pan Am Games doping scandal. It cements some of the points I've been trying to make earlier:
- doping was absolutely rampant and pervasive,
- USOC facilitated it at the Olympic level,
- public perception of doping (and thus doping-related PR) in the US changed due to the doping scandals in 83 and 84.
- none of this 70s-80s doping stuff has hitherto really been properly reviewed.
REF:
Jan Todd & Daniel L. Rosenke. 2016. 'The Event That Shook the Whole World Up’: Historicizing the 1983 Pan-American Games Doping Scandal. In:
The International Journal of the History of Sport , Volume 33, Issue 1-2.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09523367.2016.1152961#.Vzm3Vb4jWM8)
Unfortunately accessible only with subscription.
Below I've quoted what I think are the most relevant bits.
ABSTRACT
In August of 1983 at the Pan-American Games in Caracas, Venezuela,
a multi-faceted doping crisis occurred that overshadowed all other
aspects of the games. This essay marks the first attempt to historicize
the events surrounding this watershed moment in the fight against
drug use in sport. Doping was revealed in three ways in Caracas: by
the large number of positive tests that resulted in the first loss to
doping of medals in the history of the Pan-American Games, by the
exodus of the 12 American track and field athletes who flew home
rather than be subject to testing in the sophisticated lab run by Dr
Manfred Donike, and by a rash of ‘injuries’ and unexpectedly poor
performances that kept athletes out of the medals and thus out of
Donike’s lab. In the aftermath of the games, the United States Olympic
Committee implemented new policies to ensure that Americans
competing in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games would not run
the risk of similar public embarrassment.
The Caracas doping scandal did not result in a government-led hearing – as Johnson’s positive test did in Canada with the creation of the Dubin Commission2 – but, even so, the widespread use of performance enhancing drugs revealed in Caracas had profound and far-reaching effects that have, until now, been largely
overlooked by historians.3
On the impact of the Pan Am Games fiasco on public perception of doping in the US:
...the highly visible exodus of the American track athletes from Caracas, and the extensive coverage the entire doping scandal generated in newspapers, magazines, and on US television signaled an end of innocence on the doping question, especially for mainstream Americans.5 After Caracas, it was impossible for people in North America to believe that drug use was practiced only by Soviet-bloc athletes looking for an advantage.
...
The Caracas Scandal’s most important legacy, however, was the end of innocence for
mainstream Americans regarding the use of ergogenic drugs by athletes. Elliott Almond
and Julie Cart described it as ‘an ending and a beginning in the world of drugs in amateur
sports. It was the end of public and press ignorance of what had been an underground
epidemic of drug use in sport’.
On USOC's complicity (withdrawing athletes after increased testing was announced):
The men were aided in their departure by Evie Dennis and other USOC officials who managed to get tickets for all of them on short notice and organized a van to transport them to the airport. Atwood later commented on the ‘uncommon helpfulness’ of the USOC officials, amazed that it was so ‘very easy
for me to leave’.105 Robert Fachet of the Washington Post later referred to it as the USOC
Underground Railroad.
Remarkable statement from Roy Bergman, chief physician of the US team
Roy Bergman, chief physician for the US team, went even further, ‘I
think it [avoiding the testing] is more negative than taking the drugs. Taking the drugs is at least with the intent to win… It’s just an anathema to the American way of life for anyone to lose intentionally’.
An 'independent' investigation is launched:
On 17 September 1983, back home in Colorado Springs, Miller and the USOC announced
the founding of the new USOC Task Force on Drug Control. Directed by Dr. Dan Hanley,
who played such a large role in the events in Caracas, the task force also included physician
Roy Bergman, Harmon Brown from TAC’s Medical Committee, Irving Dardik of the USOC
Sports Medicine Council, Robert Voy of the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs,
and four others.
Most revealing, on how USOC continued enabling doping after 83:
130 Despite USOC President William Simon’s additional pronouncements in
Sports Illustrated that it was time athletes understand ‘that we mean business’, and that the
USOC would send only clean athletes to the 1984 Olympics,131 the USOC testing program
that evolved over the next 12 months preserved all possible sporting advantage for the
United States, rather than upholding the spirit of fair play. Bergman may have truly believed
that performing poorly in order to avoid the drug tests in Caracas was a betrayal akin to
‘the Black Sox Scandal all over again’, but the bigger scandal that emerged from the 1983
Pan American Games was how America’s sporting officials failed to adopt legitimate testing
procedures after being so publicly shamed in the eyes of the rest of the world.
...
In ‘USOC Info Sheet 7-1’ released in October of 1983, it was made clear that the USOC’s new drug testing program ‘can be requested by an NGB for formal and informal purposes’ (emphasis in the original). Formal testing, the document explained, would lead to punishment of the athlete, while ‘the informal option permits
educational or research experiences to be applied’.134 As was learned after the 1984 Olympics
had concluded, the USOC and its constituent national governing bodies did virtually no
formal testing between Caracas and the 1984 Olympics. Instead, they created a system
that helped athletes become educated on how to time their drug use in order to avoid detection, just as was being done in East Germany and the Soviet Union.
...
Javelin thrower Duncan Atwood, who pulled out of
Caracas rather than be tested, remained unconvinced that the USOC’s testing program
was stopping drug use as late as 1987. Said Atwood, ‘I think drug testing is great, but I
don’t know how well it works … a lot of people are learning their washout times … I’m no
scientist, but that’s what I’m hearing’.
Conclusion:
The battle – played out in biochemistry laboratories, in the ivy-covered offices of academic ethicists, in the back-room sessions of political advisors looking for a way to leverage more votes, and in the high-rise
offices of the lords of sport whose raison d’etre is always to produce athletes who can win
without besmirching the reputation of their team – is still being waged.
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