Something Extra On The Ball - June 30, 1969

Be it pick-me-ups or let-me-downs, build-me-ups or lie-me-downs, they can all be found in medicine's little black bag for sportsmen. it is into this bag?and into the dangerous world of drugs?that athletes plunge when they search for... SOMETHING EXTRA ON THE BALL

Bil Gilbert

" 'Where's the Dexamyl, Doc?' I yelled at the trainer rooting about in his leather valise," pitcher-author Jim Brosnan quoted himself as saying in his celebrated baseball book, Pennant Race. " 'There's nothing in here but phenobarbital and that kind of stuff.'

" 'I don't have any more,' said Doc Rohde. 'Gave out the last one yesterday. Get more when we get home.'

" 'Been a rough road trip, huh, Doc? How'm I goin' to get through the day then? Order some more, Doc. It looks like a long season.'

" 'Try one of these,' he said.

" 'Geez, that's got opium in it. Whaddya think I am, an addict or something?' "

An addict or something? It isn't the worst question in the world, though the word addict has an opium, cocaine, speed, heroin whiff to it that is not normally associated with the pills and shots that an athlete uses to bolster his physical condition or morale in the name of victory, a payday, or both. The difference is that addicts, in the normal usage of the word, take drugs because their systems are dependent on them, while athletes take them for a more specific purpose. Their goal is performance, but their quest for performance has led them deep into the wonders of the pharmacy. What do you find if you dig into the medicine cabinet of sport? Who is taking what and why? The answer is that most athletes are taking something, and probably not getting quite the results they think.

Essentially, the drugs used by athletes can be broken down into two categories—restorative and additive. Restorative drugs are those used by athletes who for one reason or another—illness, injury, pain, nervousness, sloth, gluttony, dissipation—are incapacitated. The drugs are given with the intent to restore, at least partly, the competitor's normal prowess. Painkillers, tranquilizers, barbiturates, anti-inflammants, enzymes and muscle relaxers are all restorative drugs commonly used in sports.

Additive drugs—a more controversial group—are used with the motive of stimulating performance beyond the natural limits, e.g., in the hope of making a man who has never run better than a four-minute mile cover the distance in 3.59 or even 3:55. For obvious reasons, additive drugs raise more legal, ethical and regulatory questions than do the restoratives. They are also physiologically controversial, since there is some scientific doubt as to whether there is such a thing as a truly additive drug. The athletic Establishment, however, is generally convinced that additive drugs do exist and, in this belief, uses compounds that stimulate the nervous system, affect muscle tissue and alter the personality.

Given the variety of drugs now available and the inclination of athletes to experiment with them, it is all but impossible to compile a definitive list of drugs that have been used in sports for restorative or additive purposes. Also, because of the speed with which drug information is passed among athletes, drug use cannot be neatly cataloged as to sport, e.g., alcohol for archery, Benzedrine for basketball, cocaine for crew, etc. Athletic pharmaceutical practices are, so to speak, interdisciplinary, and perhaps the only orderly way to survey athletic drug usage and the effects of drugs on sport is to examine half a dozen or so drug families now popular.

A reasonable place to begin is with the additives, the best-known of which are the amphetamines, a group of synthetic drugs that are chemically similar to adrenalin and are often referred to as pep pills. On good evidence—which includes voluntary admissions by physicians, trainers, coaches, athletes, testimony given in court or before athletic regulatory bodies, and autopsy reports—amphetamines have been used in auto racing, basketball, baseball (at all levels down to children's leagues), boxing, canoeing, cycling, football, golf, mountain climbing, Roller Derby, rodeo, Rugby, skating, skiing, soccer, squash, swimming, tennis (both lawn and table), track and field, weight lifting and wrestling. The amphetamines, of which Benzedrine, Dexedrine, Dexamyl (which has a barbiturate added) and methamphetamine (the notorious "speed" or "Meth"), are among the best-known, affect the central nervous system and produce what might be called a triple threat. They act indirectly to suppress hunger spasms, and for this reason are used as appetite-killing pills by jockeys, boxers, wrestlers and anybody else who has to make a weight. The drug is a metabolic stimulant, speeding up the respiratory and circulatory systems and enabling users to remain hyperactive when they would ordinarily slow down because of fatigue. Finally, the amphetamines act directly on the brain, inducing a sense of excitement and euphoria, a sort of I-can-lick-the-world high.

But the undesirable side effects of amphetamines are numerous. The drug is feared to be physically addictive—there is some medical dispute about this—and is certainly psychologically addictive. Overdoses or too frequent doses can cause, among other things, cardiovascular collapse, cerebral hemorrhage, brain lesions, paranoia, ulcers, nutritional problems, compulsive talkativeness, irritability, aggressive behavior and constipation. In addition, an amphetamine hangover, coming down from a high, is a wretched, depressing experience.

Though amphetamines were developed earlier, their use first became general during World War II, world war being a happening that creates an instant demand for hyperactive, aggressive and even paranoid types. Returning veterans brought the drug to the sports world, where its use has been widespread ever since. As in the military, it was and is touted as a fatigue chaser and stimulant. Therefore it is most heavily used in endurance sports. Not surprisingly, bicycle racing, often cited as the most grueling of all athletic contests, is the most notorious for amphetamine use.

"I dope myself. Everyone [that is, everyone who is a competitive cyclist] dopes himself. Those who claim they don't are liars," Jacques Anquetil, a five-time winner of the Tour de France and a French sports figure of the stature of a Jean-Claude Killy or a Michel Jazy, has said. "For 50 years bike racers have been taking stimulants Obviously, we can do without them in a race, but then we will pedal 15 miles an hour [instead of 25]. Since we are constantly asked to go faster and to make even greater efforts, we are obliged to take stimulants."

Anquetil's remark was made in the summer of 1967 in the midst of what to date has been sports' messiest public drug scandal. Anquetil himself was much involved, both as a commentator and competitor. In May 1966, after winning a race in Belgium by nearly five minutes, he forfeited his victory and his check rather than provide a urine sample, which was to be analyzed for amphetamines or other banned drugs. In September 1967 a world speed record set by Anquetil in Milan was disallowed for the same reason. In between these two incidents there were two cycling deaths attributed to amphetamines, a number of suspensions at the Amsterdam world championships and a slowdown strike by cyclists protesting the fact that they were being forced to compete without the aid of their accustomed drugs.

The furor did not arise because cyclists had suddenly begun using drugs but because drug practices were so abusive that various European political and sporting agencies could no longer overlook them as they successfully had for years. In Italy, where drug usage was once estimated at almost 100%, the late Fausto Coppi, a professional champion, had remarked, "One day I will take the wrong pill and pedal backward." And Tom Simpson, the best English professional cyclist of his day, said in 1966 in defense of amphetamines, "When you get up in the morning do you need a cup of coffee to get started? Well, after cycling 150 miles the day before, we might need three or four coffees."

A year later, in the Tour de France, Simpson's "coffee" caught up with him. The 13th lap of the race was a brutal one, involving a 6,000-foot climb up a mountain in 90� heat. Simpson felt badly at the start, telling friends that he had been too "nervous" to sleep. A mile from the summit of the mountain he began zigzagging across the road and finally collapsed in a coma. He was dead on arrival at the nearest hospital. An autopsy showed that Simpson was heavily drugged with methamphetamine, a vial of which had been found in his pocket at the time of his death.

In 1965 Belgium and France passed tough anti-dope laws, but dangerous though the amphetamines are, there has been no letup in their use by athletes in the U.S. and not much abroad. Three weeks ago Belgian Cyclist Eddy Merckx, who was leading the Tour of Italy, was disqualified from the race after a test showed he had taken an amphetamine-type drug. The underground consensus is that amphetamines have been tried in most endurance events, and there is enough evidence to make the rumor credible. Joseph Rombaux, a Belgian marathoner, was deprived of his national title in September 1968 after a positive amphetamine test, and long-distance runners—after vows of secrecy have been sworn—sometimes admit to being big benny men. Soccer players in England, Italy and Brazil have been tested and found to have used the drug or else admitted using it. Wayne Le Bombard, an Olympic speed skater (as well as an Olympic cyclist) from West Allis, Wis., says, "The bennies are generally frowned on, but they're also pretty generally used. Not with a needle; I don't know of any skater who goes that far. But there are a lot of pills." A British physician, Dr. John Williams, found that amphetamines were used by British cyclists, rowers, tennis and squash players. (A three-time British squash racquets champion of the early '30s, Don Butcher, was affectionately known as the Benzedrine Kid.)

Among major American sports, amphetamine usage may be highest in football, or again it may only be easier to verify in this sport. Among professional clubs, players, physicians and trainers of the Steelers, Chargers, Cardinals, Lions and Redskins have indicated that chemical pep is or has been used. At least one professional football team made the taking of pep pills part of its pregame routine. "It usually seems to be the older players and boys who think they need an extra lift to make it through a game that want them," says Joe Kuczo, the Redskin trainer. "I personally am not convinced that they do much good, but it's a mental thing with some of them. They've been used to the pills. In the quantities they get here, at least, I doubt if they do much harm."

"It's like beating a dead horse," says Porky Morgan, Kansas State University trainer, who confirms Kuczo's opinion about amphetamine use. "All they do is mask fatigue, they don't eliminate it."

One old hoss who had his fatigue well masked this past season was a veteran pro linebacker and amphetamine user who does not wish to be identified for his accomplishments in the latter field. He recalls the game midway through the professional season when he took his usual pregame dose of bottled happiness, then became preoccupied and took a second dose. "I was bouncing all over the field," he said later. "I was running and jumping along the sidelines hollering, 'I'm a superplayer, they can't block me. No one can block me.' It was really funny. I knew I was saying it, but I just didn't care." Observers of the game reported that Mr. X's play was strong if not super.

"Sure I took them in college," says George Connor of Notre Dame and Chicago Bear fame. Connor is not more wicked, merely more frank than most. "I understand after you take them for awhile they don't do anything for you. And if everybody is taking them, what do you gain?"

In some athletic quarters there is a feeling that more pep pills are used by high school players than any others, because teen-agers are more with the drug scene than their elders and because high school coaches and trainers are less well trained or less scrupulous. However, proof of such an assumption is very circumstantial. A high school basketball coach in Ohio was once fired for giving his players amphetamines. The lockers of the Anaheim and Downey, Calif. football teams were searched last fall for pep pills. A trainer at a Southern university says, "You cannot quote me, and I will not give you the name of the high school, but there is one in Alabama that definitely uses pep pills. I know that this is quite common because I have had freshman athletes come to me and ask for the pills to pick them up for a game."

While a lot of athletes do use amphetamines, there are some who think they have taken amphetamines but haven't. Instead they have received a placebo, a sugar pill, an aspirin or a vitamin, and been told it was a pep pill. The placebo ploy brings up a crucial question, with regard not only to the amphetamines but to many drugs. That is, do they have the expected physiological effect, or is the effect purely psychological? Do amphetamines make an athlete pedal, run, swim, skate, volley, tackle or throw faster, longer or harder than he otherwise could? Though many athletes have staked their reputations, health, and even their lives on the assumption that amphetamines are truly additive, the issue remains in some scientific doubt. There have been half a dozen studies aimed at determining the effect of amphetamines on athletes, yet there are no conclusive results.

But even if the answer is yes, that amphetamines do produce a measurable improvement in immediate performance, the drug may still be detrimental to overall performance. The basis for this judgment is that amphetamines cause, among other things, loss of sleep and appetite. They adversely affect an athlete's ability and willingness to train. Thus it is reasoned that the immediate stimulation—if it occurs—may be more than offset by detrimental long-term effects.

Bob Lundy, trainer for the Miami Dolphins, says, "Amphetamines can do much more harm than good. I've seen them [football players] in a daze when reporting for practice as late as Tuesday after Sunday's game. Others take them and lose their reactions without realizing it. They may know their assignments perfectly before the game. But when they get in there, they don't know what they're doing. So we don't use them."

Another trainer, one who declines to have his name used, says, "Some of the pros need almost a full week to get over getting pepped up for Sunday. Afterward, they must either have tranquilizers or whiskey to bring them down. So they move through a cycle: pepped up, drunk, hung over, depressed and then pepped up again."

It is probably fair to conclude that the majority of medical professionals do not believe amphetamines are beneficial to athletic performance. However, a large number of athletes do believe in pep pills. This is not to say that most athletes use amphetamines—or do not use them. That proposition is simply undocumentable.

For at least the past decade amphetamine has been the stimulant of choice in sports. However, amphetamine is certainly not the only drug that has been used by athletes trying to beat fatigue. Among others that have been tried are: strychnine, cocaine (the Incas who first used such drugs called them the "herbs which make one run"), ephedrine, caffeine and iboyaine, a relatively new entry derived from kat and, reportedly, also from the Korean Tree of Life. But the situation with all of these stimulants is similar to that of amphetamine, the most closely studied of the group. The additive properties for athletic performance remain unproved; the dangers have been proved. The stimulants are medically risky because, like every drug, they are to some degree toxic. They are particularly dangerous for athletes because they artificially increase the strain on various physiologic systems, ones that are already under special stress because of exertion. The drugs also artificially prolong the period of stress by masking fatigue.

Not being keen, high or sharp enough is a fundamental condition that athletes have always tried to compensate for. But there is another absolutely opposite occupational problem that athletes and their handlers face: athletic competition acts like excessive heat on a tempered knife blade—the sharp cutting edge of the instrument is destroyed. The resultant choking up, pressing, nervous tension, call it what you will, is a common sporting ailment and one for which numerous drug cures are now being tried. Some of the names are common enough: Miltown, Nembutal, Equanil, Librium; some not so common: Tofranil, Triavil.

One Sunday noon in Pittsburgh in the dressing room of the visiting Washington Redskins, Dr. George Resta paused in his work of injecting vitamin B-12 into the arms of football players to listen to a loud agonizing retching sound coming from the commode cubicle. "Harris," said Resta annoyedly, like a man who has forgotten to turn off a light in the basement. "We forgot his tranquilizers." Rickie Harris, a defensive back, appeared shortly, looking drawn after having lost his carefully planned breakfast. Resta opened his bag and handed Harris a tranquilizer. After Harris had gone off to deal with his pregame miseries as best he could, Resta said, "There are a few like that. We give them something pretty mild, just to take the edge off. You don't want them so sleepy they get beat on passes."

The use of sedatives, barbiturates, tranquilizers and muscle relaxers (presumably to prevent cramps and tightness) is common in most sports from the college level up. However, unlike the situation with amphetamines, the practice is usually not secretive. Anytime sleeping pills, tranquilizers or relaxants are thought useful by a physician or trainer they are given, and no bones are made about it. One reason for this is that these are restorative drugs, and the never-set-forth ethic of sport medicine is hazier with respect to such compounds than it is with an additive drug such as amphetamine. No one contends that the sedatives increase performance potential beyond normal limits. In fact, it is generally conceded that they have the opposite effect; that because they dull the senses a man under their influence probably does less well than he otherwise would if he were normally free of tension. Nevertheless, the ethical problem is there, as it is with all drugs. The inability of a .200 hitter to deal with pressure is as much a natural limitation for him as the inability of a cyclist to pedal faster then 20 mph. The ballplayer who takes tranquilizers—many do—and the cyclist who pops pep are both trying to get from a drug something that they do not think they naturally have.

Golf is a prime example of a sport in which the struggle against pressure is a major part of the contest. Tension is to golf what the oxygen debt is to a miler, muscle fatigue to a cyclist and pain to a hockey player. It is therefore meaningful that this sport is one of the few in which sedative use is surreptitious and regarded as an underhanded practice. When interviewed at a recent tournament, a number of the touring pros were immediately suspicious of any mention of sedative use, quickly claiming that if—perish the thought—drugs were used, public knowledge of this would be bad for the "image" of the game. However, it was gingerly admitted that maybe a few golfers took a few calm-down drugs, like maybe Tommy Jacobs, Al Geiberger, Dave Hill. When queried, most gave an answer similar to what Doug Sanders, often on the list of the guys-who-do, had to say. "I have taken tranquilizers. And Mayo Clinic gave me something to help me sleep, but I seldom take it. I mean practically never. This is not a motion game like football. You've got to be mentally alert. You can't be leaning against a tree that isn't there." What is suggested here applies to all athletic use of barbiturate-type drugs: the trick is in the dosage. You want to feel casual enough to lean against the tree, but you want the tree really to be there. The moral question is something else again.

In addition to exhaustion and tension, all athletes are at some time in some degree challenged by a third physiological phenomenon—pain. The relationship between pain and sports is ancient and close. For some, pain is the prohibitive price that makes games not worth playing; for others it is the secret but ultimate opponent. For most it is a necessary vocational byproduct. Though the image of the athlete as a virile, courageous, uncomplaining pain bearer has been assiduously promoted and popularly accepted, athletes in general fret, worry and complain more about pain than nonathletes. There are several good reasons for this. Games are physical, sometimes violent, and the chances of getting a broken bone, bruise or cut are clearly greater in sports than in less active pastimes. Also, athletes tend to be more dedicated body watchers than most. "They are not exactly hypochondriacs. They are just exceptionally cautious about their bodies," says Dr. Thomas Silva of the Boston Celtics. The normal athlete will immediately note and be concerned about small throbs, aches and twinges that a nonathlete accepts stoically as just part of being alive. Because he is concerned with physical performance, a very little pain can distract an athlete to a significant degree. An accountant with a sore toe is likely to accept the infirmity silently. The same ailment in a baseball pitcher often will be headline news. The player, in turn, will act as if he were threatened by advanced gangrene, and he can hardly be blamed, since his livelihood may be involved in his sore toe.

Under these unnerving circumstances, it is not surprising that pain control is one of the most common reasons drugs are used in sports. The anti-pain drugs are of two kinds: those that provide a local anesthetic for aches and strains, such as Novocain and Xylocaine, which are usually given by injection, and ethyl-chloride, which is sprayed on, and those that begin with aspirin and work up to the opiates, which act on the central nervous system. Then there are the potent anti-inflammants such as cortisone and Butazolidin, and the now-banned DMSO.

There is probably not a single sports physician in the United States, including the most conservative, who has not given a pain shot or pill at some time, and there are precious few athletes who have not taken such remedies. The explanation for the practice is the same in every sport. The sermon goes like this: "I give Novocain (or drug X) injections. However, I never give a boy a shot and send him back to play if a weight-bearing joint is involved. Pain is nature's warning, letting the body know something is wrong. If a boy continues to perform on an ankle or knee that has been deadened to pain, he runs the risk of aggravating the injury, disabling himself for a longer time, causing permanent injury or winding up in his 40s with traumatic arthritis."

No physician or trainer says he has ever given a painkiller that created a health risk for the receiver. However, most physicians and trainers, if pressed, admit that some others—often with opposing teams—do inject in this way. They will tell, off the record of course, stories about crippled halfbacks, distance runners hooked on Demerol (a synthetic morphine), pitchers whose elbows have degenerated because of too much cortisone. Obviously there is a mathematical, if not a moral, paradox here. Just as obviously, there is no way to collect testimony that will resolve the paradox—nobody is going to say, "Sure, we ruined Slug's knee, but we got three good games out of him before it went." Perhaps all that can be said is that what is good and what is bad painkilling practice is a matter of opinion, often firmly stated opinion. Some doctors feel that shooting so much as a sprained thumb is dangerous and unethical, while others see nothing wrong with freezing a broken leg.

With one exception, the major athletic drugs, whether restorative or additive, are used to achieve temporary results. They are taken before, during or after a contest, to get ready for it, to help during it or to repair damage done to the mind or body by the game. The exception is the drug group known as the anabolic steroids. The purpose for which these drugs are used by athletes is exclusively additive. The intention is not to change momentarily a mood, sensation or bodily process, but to alter the body of the user on a relatively long-term basis, to artificially create a better athletic instrument.

Steroids are a group of complex compounds naturally produced by many plants and animals. The steroids are hormones, and among these are the androgens, male hormones produced by the testes and the cortex of the adrenal glands. Anabolic steroids used by both male and female athletes are derived from male hormones. (Among the most commonly used are Dianabol, Durabolin and Deca-Durabolin, Maxibolin, Anavar, Nilevar and Winstrol.) The androgens have many effects on the body. They influence the development of male reproductive organs and secondary sexual characteristics, beard growth, thickness of skin, depth of voice, and they stimulate the libido (sex drive). A second major effect of the androgens is anabolic, i.e., body building. They improve the assimilation of protein and thus promote increased weight and muscle mass. Presumably this characteristic evolved because it served the species to have males bigger than females. (However, if given in excess to youngsters, they may stunt growth.)

The term anabolic steroid (literally, body-building hormone) is both euphemistic and misleading, since it implies that the principal effect of such drugs is body building and that the androgenic (sex influencing) properties have somehow been removed or greatly inhibited. Actually, as even the drug manufacturers admit in the small promotional print, there is no such thing as a strictly anabolic steroid. All of these drugs do affect sexual processes and characteristics.

Athletes take anabolic steroids in hopes that the drug will artificially make them bigger and stronger. However, more sophisticated athletes are now aware that the anabolic steroids may cause potent glandular reactions. The nature of these effects, benign or malignant, temporary or permanent, are a mystery and a worry not only to athletes but to physicians and physiologists as well, since there have been no serious, controlled, inclusive investigations of what the drugs do for or to young healthy bodies. Several of the so-called studies that have been made have been do-it-yourself affairs that produced more rumors than facts.

In the early 1960s a high school team physician, working in cooperation with a pharmaceutical company, gave anabolic steroids to members of the football team. The program was clandestine. It apparently violated state interscholastic regulations and came to an abrupt halt when other football coaches heard about it and complained. Supposedly a report on the effects of the hormones on the high school boys was made, but the pharmaceutical company will not release it and the doctor will not discuss it.

Dr. H. Kay Dooley, of Pomona, Calif., now perhaps the physician who most openly advocates the use of anabolic steroids—though under a doctor's supervision—oversaw a study in 1965 testing three different commercial brands of the drug on 10th- and 11th-grade football players in Bloomington, Calif. Dooley believes the drugs did increase muscle size and improve performance, and he says there were no undesirable side effects. However, he says his procedures were not sufficiently controlled to provide hard evidence supporting the efficacy of the drug. He would like to see "a good scientific study" done.

Perhaps the best existing document on the subject was published in 1966 by Dr. William M. Fowler Jr., then of the UCLA Medical School. Summarized, the Fowler report found that the hormonal drugs do increase weight. However, said Fowler, "To equate increases in weight with a possible increase in strength can be erroneous, since considerable evidence exists that much of the increase in weight is due to water retention." Fowler concluded that the relationship between anabolic steroids and strength increase in athletes is unproved, and may be unprovable because it does not exist. As to the dangers connected with the drug, Fowler lists as major ones: testicular atrophy, change in the libido, liver damage and edema.

In preparing his report, Fowler queried 38 "well-known weight lifters or field-event men." He found "50% had taken or were taking one or more of the anabolic steroids. Of the users, 47% had received the drug from physicians, and 47% were taking a dosage that was two to four times greater than the therapeutic amount recommended. All of the 19 men on the drugs expressed the belief that their performance had improved. Only five denied any side effects. Most of the 19 men had been taking anabolic drugs on and off for at least one year."

Considering the debatable effectiveness, the potential dangers and the abusive use, Fowler arrived at a strong conclusion: "The use of androgens in athletes is unethical and illegal, and those using or administering them should be banned from further competition or professional activity."

Another concern is the suspicion of many physicians that the anabolic steroids may increase the chances of premature cancer of the prostate. Says Dr. Allan J. Ryan of the University of Wisconsin: "We won't be truly able to evaluate the damage this fad may have caused for 10 or 15 years."

All in all, the anabolic steroid scene is not a happy one. There is a lot of clandestine gossip that the drug is effective and safe—or that it is useless and dangerous—but no one has convincing proof either way. Many anabolic steroid users feel guilty about the practice and suspect they are doing something sneaky, but no sporting body in the U.S. has specifically declared the drug illegal, or for that matter even plainly said that its use is unethical or dangerous.

Among many who are perplexed by the anabolic steroid problem and the general confusion surrounding the athletic medicine chest is Dave Maggard, the young University of California track coach who was a shotputter on the 1968 Olympic team. Maggard's problem is simple: he is uncertain how he should advise the young men he is coaching.

"What I wish," says Maggard, "is that some reputable scientific group would really study certain drugs and tell us yes or no as to whether they are effective, and yes or no as to whether they are dangerous. Then I'd like to see the NCAA, the AAU, the U.S. Olympic Committee and all the conferences go ahead and put us straight—tell all of us to either use the drugs, or don't. I think if most drugs were banned—things like amphetamines, barbiturates, anabolic steroids—most athletes would stop using them. It's this halfway stuff, the rumors, the idea maybe you have to use them to be competitive that has made it such a mess."

That there is not now sufficient information to give firm answers on the safety and effectiveness of the many drugs that athletes use does not diminish the importance of Maggard's question, nor provide an excuse for ignoring it.

"Someday," says Dr. Ryan, "somebody will find a drug that measurably improves performance, is expensive, and is not available to everyone or known by everyone. That is the day when we are all going to have to stand up and be counted on what is right and wrong—we will have to decide then what sport is all about."

Unlike the conservative Dr. Ryan, a good many athletes, coaches, trainers and physicians believe that we already have found the alchemist's stone; it is anabolic steroids, amphetamines, strychnine, iboyaine, muscle relaxers, B-12, cortisone, etc., etc., etc. Whether it is true or not, the belief and the practices that follow the belief are enough to suggest, as they have to Dave Maggard, that the stand-up-and-be-counted time has already arrived for the athletic Establishment.