1

Olympic Doping

Rachel Anthony

Department of Sociology

History and Sociology of Sport

Professor Filippo

April 29, 2021

 2

Abstract

Olympic cheating is as old as the games themselves. Many believe the first historically recorded

games came about to commemorate a victory based on cheating. Today, cheating typically takes

the form of doping, which can be defined as the use of prohibited substances to enhance athletic

performance. The reasons for cheating seem somewhat straightforward; however, the results are

not. When it is determined that an Olympic athlete is guilty of doping— sometimes years after

the victory—the fallout is far more complicated than just taking a medal away from one athlete

and giving it to another. There are significant implications, often including losing millions of

dollars in sponsorships and endorsements. In addition to the athletes themselves, doctors and

coaches, and even whole countries, can be involved in cheating scandals. In spite of strict testing

procedures, some athletes continue to try to outwit science while other athletes compete “clean,”

even when doing so is to their disadvantage.

Keywords: cheating, doping, Olympic Games, Beijing, Chaunté Lowe

 3

Olympic Doping

Chaunté Lowe’s story showcases both the best and the worst of the Olympic Games. A

high jumper, Lowe competed in four games—in 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016— without winning

a medal. According to New York Times journalist Michael Powell (2017), she did, however,

become “a favorite of the track crowds, with her high bounding steps and leaps, slithering up, up

and over that bar” (para. 26). Her appeal is evident: “She lands and bounds to her feet, clapping,

smiling, doing a little boogie” (para. 26). Lowe has the backstory that Olympic announcers love

to feature. She grew up with an unreliable mother and an incarcerated father; later, she

experienced a house foreclosure followed by a period of homelessness. In spite of these early

difficulties, she found a much-needed sense of stability in her grandmother, with whom she

lived, and later in a supportive and committed coach at Georgia Tech (Powell, 2017).

Doping plays a huge role in the current chapter of Lowe’s life story. In November 2016,

Lowe was notified that retroactive drug tests revealed that the third-, fourth-, and fifth-place

finishers in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing had resorted to doping. This revelation effectively

moved Lowe from sixth place to third, which meant that she earned a bronze medal (Powell,

2017). Telling her story on John Williams’s WGN radio show, she sounds happy and wistful, not

bitter. “Cheating was never an option for me,” she told Williams (2017); but still, she can

understand the pressures on others to do so.

Although cheating by Olympic athletes is nothing new, their reasons for cheating and the

methods they use to do so have evolved over time. And the consequences that cheaters and their

fellow athletes endure as a result are far-reaching and significant.

Olympic Origins
 4

Although the origin of the Olympics is somewhat unknown, journalist J. Weston Phippen

(2016), writing for The Atlantic, related a story that might provide insight into why some athletes

cheat. Pelops, a suitor for the hand of Greek King Oenomaus’s daughter, began the games

roughly 3,000 years ago to “commemorate his triumph” after besting King Oenomaus in a

chariot race, thus becoming the king’s son-in-law. To ensure a win, Pelops paid a bribe to rig

Oenomaus’s chariot. In this version of the origin of the Olympics, the games were actually cre-

ated on a foundation of cheating.

According to some sources, including Phippen (2016), “plenty of athletes cheated” (para.

10), despite swearing to Zeus to compete fairly. Cheaters were sometimes flogged or excluded

from the games. They also paid fines that were used to erect Zanes, or honorific statues in the

likeness of Zeus (Cartwright, 2013). Each Zane included a placard shaming the athletes who

cheated. The Zanes, however, were not a deterrent: “This warning, and the overt, long-standing

disgrace of miscreants, did not deter further incidents of bribery and subterfuge: the number of

Zanes multiplied” (Spivey, 2004, p. 166).

Over the years since those first games, while “the manner of cheating has evolved . . . the

human desire to cheat has not” (Phippen, 2016, para. 4). The games that have come to be known

as the “Modern Olympics,” the first games after 393 AD, began in 1896 in Athens, when 241

participants from 14 nations competed in 43 events (International Olympic Committee, n.d.-a).

For these games the marathon was created “as a tribute to the legend of Pheidippides, a courier

who ran roughly twenty-five miles, from a great battle . . . and then collapsed and died from the

effort” (Staton, 2012, para. 2). The third-place marathon winner of the 1896 games was

discovered to have used a carriage to complete a portion of the course. Eight years later, a car
 5

replaced the carriage in a similar incident (Staton, 2012, para 5). So began the modern era of

Olympic cheating.

Modern-Day Cheating

Today, an Olympic athlete jumping into a car for a few miles seems practically

impossible; cameras capture competitors’ every move on the course. However, there are other

ways of cheating, such as doping, which is broadly defined by the World Anti-Doping Agency

(WADA) as “the occurrence of one or more of the anti-doping rule violations,” and which

includes the use, attempted use, or detection of a prohibited substance in samples taken from

athletes (2015, p. 18). The list of prohibited substances, ranging into the hundreds, includes

marijuana, a drug not believed to be performance enhancing according to Sue Sisley, a doctor

and researcher, and Dick Pound, a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)

(Kilgore & Maese, 2021). However, smoking marijuana during the Olympic trials meant that

Sha’Carri Richardson, a popular track and field athlete, was suspended for 30 days and was

unable to participate in the 2021 summer Olympics. Richardson explained that she understood

the rules but had nevertheless used marijuana to cope with feelings of grief around her biological

mother’s death (ESPN, 2021). No one, not even WADA, accused her of trying to enhance her

performance. However, she did use a banned substance, and rules are rules. After all, some

athletes cheat purposefully. Edwards (2010) quotes Dick Pound, also the former WADA

chairman, on five of the top reasons athletes choose to use performance-enhancing drugs:

1. Desire to win at all costs—even if that means lying.

2. Financial reasons—with professionals trying to extend a career.

3. National pressures—as exemplified by the old East German system.

4. Individual pressure from coaches—who get paid better if they coach winners.
 6

5. Belief they will not get caught—myth of invincibility. (para. 10)

It is worth noting that some athletes cheat without knowing they are doing so. The East

German women’s swimming team is a famous example. Reporting from Berlin in 2000 for the

New York Times, Maimon covered the court case of Lothar Kipke. As the head doctor in charge

of the drug program of the East German Swimming Federation from 1975 to 1985, Kipke was

ultimately convicted “of doping and causing bodily harm to 58 swimmers” (Maimon, 2000,

introduction, para. 4). The girls who were doped, some as young as 10 years old, were given “40

pills a day,” which were “taken under strict supervision” (Maimon, 2000, “A Regimen of Pills,”

para. 3). According to Maimon (2000), years later, many swimmers reported major medical

issues, including pregnancies resulting in birth defects.

By all accounts, the pressures on Olympians are intense, and significant funds are

required for training and competing even before an athlete reaches the Olympic Games.

However, the temptation to cheat is great. “Once you start winning, sponsors will be attracted

and then money will come,” explained South African athlete Hezekiel Sepeng, who won a silver

medal at the 1996 Olympic Games but lost his career when he later tested positive for an

anabolic steroid (Edwards, 2012, “Leveling the Playing Field,” para. 8). Another example is U.S.

sprinter Marion Jones, who in 2007 lost millions of dollars in sponsorship deals when stripped of

her Olympic medals (Edwards, 2012). A December 12, 2007, ESPN.com story describes Jones,

“once the world’s biggest track and field star,” as a “disgraced drug cheat” (2007, para. 2).

Money and medals aside, Edwards (2012) has noted that a large number of athletes manage to

evade positive drug tests.

While many athletes dope in order to boost their already considerable talents, others say

they dope not to gain advantage, but rather to avoid disadvantage. If other athletes are doping,
 7

then the competition is unfair. On October 9, 2012, George Hincapie, an elite cyclist, posted a

statement on his website that supports this motivation:

It is extremely difficult today to acknowledge that during a part of my career I used

banned substances. . . . Early in my professional career, it became clear to me that, given

the widespread use of performance enhancing drugs by cyclists at the top of

the profession, it was not possible to compete at the highest level without them. (para. 3)

Hincapie is not alone. Gifford (2016), writing for Scientific American online, cited an

anonymous survey revealing that 29% of polled athletes confessed to resorting to performance-

enhancing drugs. “Clearly, plenty of cheaters are getting away with it,” Gifford concluded (para.

6).

The website of the IOC does not provide a list of athletes who have been stripped of their

medals. A search for medalists from the 2008 Beijing Games turns up this official statement:

“Please note that because a number of anti-doping rules violations procedures are still in

progress—including procedures involving . . . the samples collected in Beijing 2008 and London

2012—the information contained in the list is not final” (International Olympic Committee, n.d.-

b). However, a 2015 report (World Anti-Doping Agency, 2017) offers some statistics on anti-

doping rule violations (see Figure 1).

While many cheaters are never discovered, in the long run, the odds seem to be against

athletes who dope: “In order to compete, athletes must give up their privacy, notifying officials

of their whereabouts every single day of the year, so they can be located for on-the-spot, out-of-

competition testing overseen by the World Anti-Doping Agency” (Gifford, 2016, introduction,

para. 7). In her WGN interview, Chaunté Lowe supported Gifford’s findings when she explained

that drug tests happen randomly and frequently, several times a week. According to Lowe,
 8

samples are saved and retested for years to “allow the technology to catch up to the methods of

cheating” (as cited in Williams, 2017).

The Cost of Doping

The cost of doping—financial and otherwise—is incalculable and affects all athletes,

whether they are medalists or not. The decision to take away Jones’s five medals may have

affected the status of dozens of athletes (“Jones stripped”). Take away a gold medal and the

silver medalist moves up; then the bronze winner; then suddenly, like Lowe, the sixth-place

finisher is a medal winner—sometimes years later, without the medal ceremony, the

endorsements, and the additional competition opportunities. As Lowe explained, “It rewrites my

story” (Williams, 2017).

In the years since the summer 2007 Olympics, winners have had the potential to gain

millions in endorsement and sponsorship deals. Non-medalists often do not have that option,

even when they receive their awards years later. In other words, winners who are later found to

be cheaters nevertheless prosper, at least in the short term. On the other hand, competitors later

found to be medal winners are cheated out of possibilities. For example, the pole-vaulter Derek

Miles was belatedly awarded a bronze medal for his performance in the Beijing Olympic Games.

Today, he is an assistant track coach at the University of South Dakota (Powell, 2017). Coaching

track is not a bad job, but winning athletes should have the chance to benefit from their

performance. If nothing else, Miles was denied his moment on the dais, standing below the US

flag and accepting the congratulations of the 2008 Olympic crowd. Instead of receiving his

medal in a cheering stadium, Miles accepted his belated honor on April 17, 2017, in what looks

like a windowless classroom. Miles was emotional as he spoke to the small group—thankful,
 9

grateful, and appreciative. Like Lowe, he was not bitter. Instead, he spoke of being lucky and of

the opportunities he has had to surround himself with great people (“Derek Miles,” 2017).

Back in 773 BC, athletes stood in front of the bronze icon “Zeus the Oath Giver” and

“swore an oath to the god of thunder vowing they would follow the regulations of the Olympics

and play fair” (Phippen, 2016, para. 1). Today, one Olympian from each host country takes the

official Olympian oath for all those competing. One wonders how seriously some athletes treat

this oath, as it seems doping is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Still, other athletes,

like Lowe and Miles, continue to take this oath to heart. In doing so, they commit to competing

“clean,” to benefiting not from drugs, but from skill, passion, and dedication. They are the true

Olympians.
 10

References

American sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson apologizes for positive marijuana test. (2021, July 2).

ESPN. https://www.espn.com/olympics/trackandfield/story/_/id/31749534/american-

sprinter-shacarri-richardson-apologizes-positive-test

Cartwright, M. (2013, May 23). Olympic games. In Ancient history encyclopedia.

http://www.ancient.eu/Olympic_Games/#related_articles

Derek Miles receives Olympic bronze medal [Video]. (2017, April 17). Argus Leader.

http://www.argusleader.com/videos/sports/college/university-of-south-dakota/2017/

04/17/video-derek-miles-receives-olympic-bronze-medal/100575290/

Edwards, P. (2012, December 11). The gain game: Why do sports stars cheat? CNN.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/11/sport/sport-cheats-suarez-cazorla/index.html

Gifford, B. (2016, August 5). The Scientific American guide to cheating in the Olympics.

Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-scientific-american-

guide-to-cheating-in-the-olympics/

Hincapie, G. (2012, October 9). [Statement from George Hincapie]. http://hincapie.com/ourstory

International Olympic Committee. (n.d.-a). Athens 1896. https://www.olympic.org/athens-1896

International Olympic Committee. (n.d.-b). Athletics. https://www.olympic.org/beijing-

2008/athletics

Jones stripped of five Olympic medals, banned from Beijing Games. (2007, December 12).

ESPN. http://www.espn.com/olympics.trackandfield/news/story?id=3151367

Kilgore, A., & Maese, R. (2021, July 3). The doping rules that cost Sha’Carri Richardson have a

debated, political history. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.

com/sports/olympics/2021/07/03/shacarri-richardson-marijuana-olympics-doping-ban/
 11

Maimon, A. (2000, February 6). One tale of doping and birth defects. [Special report]. The New

York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/library/sports/other/020600swim-germany.html

Phippen, J. W. (2016, August 19). A brief history of cheating at the Olympics. The Atlantic.

https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2016/08/cheating-at-the-olympics/ 495938/

Powell, M. (2017, July 7). Olympic medal, earned; glory, denied; future, uncertain. The New

York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/sports/chaunte-lowe-olympics-doping-

high-jump.html

Spivey, N. (2004). Ancient Olympics: A history. Oxford University Press.

Staton, S. (2012, August 3). Crossing the line. The New Yorker.

http://newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/crossing-the-line

Williams, J. (Host). (2017, July 12). “Donald Trump Jr. defends emails” [Audio podcast

episode]. In The John Williams Show. http://wgnradio.com/2017/07/12/

the-john-williams-show-full-podcast-07-12-17-human-chain-rip-tide-rescuer-donald-

trump-jr-defends-e-mails-olympics-bronze-medalist-chaunte-lowe/

World Anti-Doping Agency. (2015, January 1). World anti-doping code 2015.

https://www.wada-ama.org/sites/default/files/resources/files/wada-2015-world-anti-

doping-code.pdf

World Anti-Doping Agency. (2017, April 3). 2015 Anti-doping rule violations [ADRVs] report.

https://www.wada-ama.org/sites/default/files/resources/files/2015_adrvs_

report_web_release_0.pdf
 12

Figure 1. Sports with the highest number of anti-doping rule violations (ADRVs) in 2018.
Adapted from Executive Summary of the 2018 Anti-Doping Rule Violations (ADRVs) Report,
by The World Anti-Doping Agency. https://www.wada-ama.org/sites/default/files/
resources/files/2018_adrv_report.pdf.