Hey everybody, welcome back to XFLNACON5, the podcast where we take the questions you always wanted to ask and talk about them in a way that's easy to understand. We are your hosts, I'm Tim. And I'm Kevin. So Kevin, today we're talking about a topic that always comes up when the Olympics is going on, and that is doping.
What are we talking about when we say doping and why is it an issue? Oh yeah, it's a pretty big deal. So in sports, doping is the use of a drug that athletes or competitors are basically not allowed to use. There are certain drugs like anabolic steroids and some other stimulants that are totally banned in professional sports because of the fact that they can help make athletes stronger or faster.
The drugs may be legal to use for some medical reasons, but competitors will absolutely not be allowed to use them in order to create that level playing field. So today, in many sports, competitors at the highest levels take a drug test to prove that they're not using any of these drugs. How long ago in history did this start to become a problem? Oh my god, actually centuries ago.
So performance enhancement started pretty much with the invention of the concept of sports. Have you ever heard of the Nordic berserkers? Oh, is that where the word berserk comes from? Yes, that too.
Berserkers were these warriors who were said to have fought in this like trance-like fury, like you say, you know, gave rise to the modern English word berserk, meaning furiously violent or out of control. There's even Scandinavian mythology that says berserkers would drink this mixture called butotin or something to increase their physical power at the risk of insanity. I imagine the Greeks and the Romans also had their efforts since they had a lot of sporting athletic contests. Oh, yes, yes.
I mean, the ancient Olympics started in Greece, and there have been a legend that have had different forms of doping. I believe in ancient Rome, you know, where cherry racing had kind of become a huge part of the culture, the athletes, they drank these herbal infusions to strengthen them before said cherry races. But am I right in thinking it was only in modern times that athletes then started getting disqualified for doping? Oh, yes, yes, that's right.
That's a little bit more recent. It was actually this Swedish tentathlete named Hans Gunnar Ljewal, who was the first athlete to ever be disqualified for doping in the 1968 Olympics. What drug did he take? Oh, this is kind of funny.
He actually drank two beers to calm his nerves before pistol shooting, basically giving him an unfair advantage. Well, it does seem like things have become a little more sophisticated since then. Oh, yes, yes. So certain sports in particular, like athletics, cycling, have seen a number of doping scandals over the years.
You know, right? It got so bad that the winner of the Tour de France has been positive for doping something like 40 times in the past 50 years. And so why is it so hard to catch? Well, it's kind of been a chemical arms race.
Dopers, they learn to switch to new drugs and masking agents, and the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, are trying to keep up. So the hard part about detecting these drugs is that most of the drugs they take are the exact same chemicals that your body makes naturally, but maybe in different quantities. Actually, even sometimes with doping, you're just tricking the body into making its own drugs. So while you may be able to detect certain chemicals that are supposed to be there, it's just really hard to prove that a chemical is from the process of doping rather than from just being naturally generated by your body.
Is that then how Lance Armstrong was able to not get caught for so many years? Armstrong's scheme was at a whole other level. He hired experts at doping who not only knew about the latest and greatest drugs, but also exactly how the anti-doping agencies worked and what they were able to detect and how. So they could even do things like plan the entire season, including their training sessions and competitions around how they were getting the best out of each drug.
For example, they might use steroids during the off-season to promote muscle growth and then have a period without any drugs to kind of get that all out of the system, then also taking out lots of blood from their system to be used later. You know, so for the build-up to a season, it was reported that they took a drug called EPO to promote the production of more red blood cells. It sounds so elaborate. It makes it sound as though maybe the authorities had no chance at all.
Well, the good news is that more cheating is being caught these days. You know, sometimes it's years after the fact. So that's why samples are taken at events that can be stored for a while until new techniques are invented. And it has become more and more common to test throughout the year so that athletes cannot just dope themselves during the off-season.
So now there is no off-season for testing. Any day of the year, top athletes need to provide their location and time windows each day where they can be tested. So remember when we did an episode on chess and there was a question of whether chess is a sport? Well, is there doping in chess?
Oh, yes. Yes, actually. Chess players are tested for drugs that appear on the WADA band list. In fact, that's not all.
In video games, eSports, you know, a pro Counter-Strike player once said about his team that they were all on Adderall in an interview. And as a result, the eSports League TSL announced that they will start working with the world of anti-doping agency to implement drug testing for now pro eSports players too. Along those lines, why isn't caffeine on the band's substance list? Hmm, also a really good question.
So there's two reasons here. First is that, you know, caffeine is just so plentiful and it's also well-known enough so that it wouldn't be really a secret weapon giving any team a particular edge. It's fairly unreasonable to have people block out caffeine when it's just so readily available in things like tea and chocolate. Second, it's also not really a health concern.
Now, with steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, they are regulating for the long-term harm caused by these drugs. But we know caffeine pretty well now and aren't worried about the long-term effects. But you are right, though, and it might be of an artificial advantage. So some sports are monitoring it and asking people not to take too much.
You should remember how in our very first episode was about how caffeine gives energy, even though it has no calories. Ah, yes, I do remember that. It was back then when we hardly even knew how to podcast. So finally, there is a concept in doping called the Goldman's Dilemma.
Can you explain what that is? Oh, yes. The Goldman's Dilemma is this question that was posed to elite athletes by physician and publicist Bob Bolden. He basically asked whether they would take a drug that would guarantee them success in sport, but cause them to die after five years.
And to his surprise in his research, approximately half the athletes responded that they would indeed take the drug. Imagine that. Wow, that is a really high proportion and a thought-provoking question, which is also a great one to end on. Did you learn something new?
If you did, send us an email. We are at eli5thepodcast.gmail.com. Big thank you to one of our listeners called Batchy from Great Britain, who wrote in with a five-star review on iTunes. Five-star review?
Oh my gosh, thank you so much. This podcast is just what I was looking for. It's informative, lighthearted, and Tim and Kevin explain things you didn't know you needed to know so well. Well, thank you, Batchy.
As always, thanks to the community at r slash explainbackim5, and we will see you all next week.