The document discusses the history of anti-doping rules and their relationship to the concept of amateurism. It traces how anti-doping attitudes originally emerged in the late 19th century to distinguish amateurs from working-class professionals but that amateurs still engaged in doping. Over time, the ideology of amateurism shaped anti-doping policy, even as the distinction between amateur and professional has blurred. The NCAA now subjects college athletes to extensive anti-doping testing year-round without their consent, continuing the legacy of using such rules to uphold amateurism.

1. Amateurs No More
JRN 589 / 450
Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
Prof. Hanley

2. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
Up to this point, we have focused
on the definition of amateurism as
it relates to compensation, either
in under-the-table cash, full-ride
scholarships, or both.

3. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
But the issue of whether an
athlete is an amateur or a
professional extended beyond pay
into the physical realm of the
body in the 20th century.

4. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
The NCAA has asserted since the
1980s that anti-doping testing is
required to guarantee a level
playing field of competition and to
safeguard the health and safety of
athletes.
Ironically, the contemporary
testing regime has its roots in the
19th century debate over
amateurism and a move against
working-class athletes.

5. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
As with pay, the history goes back
to ancient Greece.
“Mushrooms, plants and mixtures
of wine and herbs were used by
ancient Greek Olympic athletes
and Roman gladiators competing
in Circus Maximus dating back to
776 BC,” a medical study from
2007 revealed.

6. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
“Various plants were used for
their stimulant effects in speed
and endurance events as well as
to mask pain, allowing injured
athletes to continue competing,”
wrote David Baron, David Martin
and Samir Abol Magd in that
study.

7. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
As we have discussed, the Greeks
and the Romans were oblivious to
amateurism as they competed for
glory and prizes – and cash
rewards - in addition to
immortality. If a wine-and-herb
potion helped them to win a
wrestling match or race, they
would consume it.

8. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
Fast forward to the 19th century,
when the misinterpretation of the
ancient Greeks in terms of their
play-for-pay reality led to the
formulation of amateurism in
Britain.
The herb-and-wine performance
enhancer piece, however, turned
out to be weaponized, not
misinterpreted.

9. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
As John Gleaves pointed out in the
assigned article, landing on a sort
of universal definition of
amateurism has always been
difficult, as the word’s meaning is
fluid.
It is widely accepted, however,
that the concept emerged in part
to bar working class athletes from
competing with wealthier foes.

10. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
Gleaves wrote that “amateurism
served as a legitimating ideology
for excluding the lower classes
from play and a ploy by the
middle classes to maintain their
control on sport” in Britain.
Among the arguments:
professionals would dope;
amateurs would not. But that
didn’t stop amateurs from doping.

11. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
“Injections of strychnine,
tinctures of cocaine and sips of
alcohol were all used in normal
medical practice to treat aches,
pains and fatigue, so the idea
was that if an athlete
experienced these symptoms
during their sport, they were
allowed to take medicine to
cure them just like anyone
else,” reported The Guardian in
an article about 19th century
doping.

12. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
Still, historian Mike Huggins
explained that “amateurism
became a question of power, of
ensuring the middle-class control,
a way of keeping working-class
players in their place or keeping
them out … Professionals, or
those working in the mines,
factories or other relevant physical
jobs, had better strength and skills
and outclassed those working in
sedentary ways during the week.”

13. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
To prevent slipping in social status,
middle-to-upper-class elites would
not want to be perceived as
professional athletes.
The amateur code would protect
them, so to keep the barriers high,
elites hit upon not only money but
doping as tools of the working-
class athlete.

14. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
The press went along with the
fabrication that working-class
athletes would dope: “In fact,
contemporaneous to the birth of
the modern Olympic games in
(1896), editorials emerged
espousing anti-doping attitudes,”
wrote Gleaves.

15. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
In 1895, The New York Times
reported that no “true athletes”
would use “any such injurious and
adventitious aids,” even though
professional athletes could use
such drugs “in order to help them
prepare for their work.”
The distinction between “true”
and “professional” was clear.

16. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
Historian John Hoberman argued
that the amateur/professional
divide created “a cultural
apartheid” throughout sport that
“separated drug-free amateurs
from professional athletes, whose
right to use drugs was taken for
granted.”

17. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
Hoberman wrote: “The
professional athletes enjoyed a
tacit exemption from the ethical
standards that applied to
amateurs.”

18. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
Yet no formal definition of doping
existed as only a sense that
working-class athletes who
needed the money would do
whatever it took to win.
That gave amateurs a loophole to
take substances to enhance their
performance, blurring the
distinction between them and
pros.

19. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
The so-called stimulants of the
late 19th and early 20th centuries -
strychnine, alcohol, tobacco, and
purified oxygen – would be
thought today to be generally
harmful but at the time, each was
perceived as helpful and legal
enhance performance.

20. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
And amateurs did not reject such
stimulants, at least not initially in
the mid to late 19th century.
A newspaper editorial reported
that in 1860 Oxford’s rowing team
would supply champagne to serve
as a stimulant for training and
races.

21. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
There was a doping ban at the
1908 London Olympics, but this
was “probably due to fears
about the athletes' health in
this particularly stressful event
and not because it was
"cheating" or "unfair" (the rules
only applied to the marathon,
after all),” The Guardian wrote.

22. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
The IOC defined the amateur as
“one who participates and always
has participated in sport solely for
pleasure and for physical, mental
or social benefits he derives there
from …”
But it did allow sports such cycling
and the marathon, both magnets
for professionals who doped their
way to victories without penalty.

23. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
In a 1907 marathon, for example,
runner John Lindquist used
whiskey as a stimulant during the
race, dosing, if you will, every
mile.

24. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
Even University of Chicago football
coach Amos Alonzo Stagg – a
staunch promoter of amateurism
– looked to have his players dope
with pure oxygen.
In 1908, Stagg traveled to London
to meet with an Oxford professor
and a physician who noted sharp
improvements in swimmers and
runners who inhaled pure oxygen.

25. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
The New York Times reported on
Sept. 6, 1908, that Stagg planned
to encourage players to use
oxygen during the upcoming
season.
The Times reported that the “
public or secret administration of
oxygen to athletes may become
the rule hereafter in all
intercollegiate and professional
contests.”

26. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
An expert asserted that oxygen
should not be considered “dope”
as “it is a vital principle in the air
we breath.”
The Times’ reporter, however,
noted that the oxygen was
artificially separated from air and
“cannot be availed under natural
conditions.”

27. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
Still, the reporter showed no
innocence about its use: “Of
course, if it will help spur to
victory an opposing team or
contestant its use cannot be
barred from the track and football
field. The coming season’s football
will doubtless be of the
oxygenated variety.”

28. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
Anti-doping attitudes gained
momentum, nevertheless.
The Harvard and Yale crew
officials forbade their athletes
from using stimulants during the
season in 1900 to uphold the
amateur moral code.

29. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
Gleaves wrote that “anti-doping
views solidified around the
ideology of amateurism” from
1904 to 1924 and that “this
notion would influence the
amateur world to a much greater
degree as it gradually concluded
that stimulants and other artificial
forms of enhancement
contradicted the spirit of amateur
sport.”

30. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
“The belief among advocates of
amateurism that such practices
contradicted the spirit of sport
had solidified enough that, in
1928, the leading governing body
of amateur track and field, the
IAAF, became the first
international sporting federation
to formally ban their athletes from
doping in competition,” Gleaves
concluded.

31. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
Gleaves underscored his point by
writing that “in the 1910s and
1920s professional athletes could
acceptably dope illustrates that
amateurism remained the driving
force behind the early anti-doping
movement. Among members of
the working class, few appear to
have objected to athletes taking
stimulants to enhance their
performance.”

32. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
The use of oxygen as a
performance enhancer returned
in 1932 at the Olympic Games in
Los Angeles after the Japanese
swimming team defeated the U.S.
U.S. coaches Matt Mann and
Robert Kiphuth formed a NCAA
subcommittee to investigate the
Japanese team’s alleged use of
oxygen.

33. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
Mann alleged that use of oxygen
amounted to doping and thus
should not be part of an amateur
competition. He announced a
declaration of war against doping
of amateur swimmers, as Gleaves
noted in his paper.

34. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
Gleaves wrote that “Mann did use
the accusation as a criticism of the
Japanese indicates that he
believed such criticism would
resonate with a broader
audience—an audience who also
perceived doping as un-amateur.”

35. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
Mann’s attempt to disqualify the
Japanese team was unsuccessful.
But in 1938, the IOC formally
acted against doping, banning the
use of drugs or artificial stimulants
to preserve the amateur status of
Olympic participants.

36. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
“Clearly, by 1938, the IOC believed
that doping did not belong in
either the Olympics or any
amateur sport,” Gleaves wrote.
At any rate, doping would prove to
be a persistent ethical problem for
the concept of amateurism in
framing a distinction between
amateurs and pros outside of
money.

37. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
In 1952, Dr. Karl Evang, Norway’s
director general of public health,
said that “the use of dope . . . in
the amateur sports world, needs
very strong and united counter-
action,” according to Gleaves.
He was exploiting fear that
amateur sports were not
maintaining enough distance
between it and professionals.

38. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
The IOC established a list of
prohibited substances in 1967 and
began the testing of athletes at
the 1972 Munich Summer Games.
In 1988, Ben Johnson was stripped
of his 100-meter gold medal when
he tested positive for steroids.

39. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
But Gleaves wrote that he
believed the “ideological
underpinnings of today’s anti-
doping rhetoric point to a
fundamental tension that exists in
contemporary sport today. At the
very same time that amateurism is
for all intents and purposes
extinct in the twenty-first century,
anti-doping attitudes appear more
entrenched than ever.”

40. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
In short, what started as a regime
to keep doping out of amateur
athletics to separate amateurs
from pros has now blurred the
distinction between the two.
Amateurs are even tested for
doping more so than pros.

41. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
“Although the ideology of
amateurism may have died out, it
continues to shape how the
sporting world views doping and
the use of drugs in sport,” Gleaves
concluded.

42. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
An examination of anti-doping
policy stands in evidence
supporting Gleaves’ perspective.
The NBA stared a drug-testing
program in 1983. Several other
pro leagues followed in carving
out anti-drug testing protocols in
contract negotiations with players’
unions.

43. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
In January 1986, and again in
January 1990, the NCAA finally
codified anti-doping testing
protocols “so that no one
participant might have an
artificially induced advantage or
feel pressured to use substances
or methods to gain an unfair
competitive advantage … “

44. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
According to the NCAA, in year-
round testing events, “athletes
may be selected because of sport,
position, competitive ranking,
athletics financial-aid status,
playing time, directed testing, an
NCAA-approved random selection
or any combination thereof.”

45. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
The NCAA’s drug-testing program
covers banned substances such as
anabolic agents, hormone and
metabolic modulators, diuretics
and masking agents, and peptide
hormones, growth factors, and
related substances and mimetics.

46. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
In addition, in championships and
postseason bowl games, NCAA
testing includes for beta-2
agonists, beta blockers (in rifle),
stimulants, cannabinoids and
narcotics.
The NCAA may test for any
banned substance at any time.

47. Amateurism & Anti-Doping Rules
In an ironic twist in the long and
winding history of the concept of
amateurism, it is the amateurs
who are now thought to be the
norm in doping rather than the
professional athletes, who
contractually arrange how and
when they are tested.
College athletes don’t have that
choice.