Arriving In Bookstores On June 30th …

… or thereabouts. Right now, my book Dope: A History of Performance Enhancement in Sports from the Nineteenth Century to Today is scheduled to be released at the end of June. It’s being published by Praeger, which is an imprint of the Greenwood Publishing Group. (Greenwood’s catalog description here.) If all goes according to plan, you should be able to get a copy shortly before the 2008 Tour de France begins.

For most of 2007, my second job (third, if you count this blog) was writing a history (not “the” history, as that could fill an encyclopedia — and perhaps there ought to be one called the Encyclopaedia Dopaica) of performance enhancement in the sporting world over the last century plus.

Dope starts in the mid-1800s, when doping was performed on racehorses with the intent of altering the natural outcome of races. Back then, the stables in which the horses were kept weren’t all that well guarded, so a doper could come along and administer a drug that would affect the animal’s racing. Sometimes the drugs were meant to give the horse a boost, and sometimes they were meant to slow the animal down.

There are, of course, stories of doping within cycling that go back quite a way. Some of the characters you’ll meet in the book include cyclinst Arthur Linton and Jimmy Michael, along with their manager, Choppy Warburton. Warburton, incidentally, is likely the first manager ever banned for doping his athletes.

You’ll get to see stories of doping in the Olympics from the quadrennial spectacle’s earliest days, the rise of various drugs (like amphetamines, testosterone, other steroids and eventually EPO and designer steroids), as well as read about doping incidents across a wide range of sports over the last century. You’ll read stories of doping in weightlifting, swimming, track and field, cycling, football (both kinds), baseball, as well as doping in other sports.

While the attention that is currently paid to the subject makes it often appear as if the problem is of relatively recent vintage, you’ll learn about a scandal in the 1950s that rocked the world of track and field in much the same way as the Festina scandal and other scandals have rocked cycling over the past 10 years. At the center of the story was a doctor who claimed that many of the athletes who broke the four-minute mile mark in the 1950s did so through the use of amphetamines. His character and behavior are eerily reminiscent of other, more recent figures. An interesting outgrowth of that scandal: One of the first scientific studies aimed at determining the real benefit of a performance-enhancing drug.

But most of all, what I hope you’ll get out of the book is an appreciation and understanding that doping is not a problem that just magically appeared over the last twenty years (despite how the many in the mainstream media seem to cast the story). The desire to boost human performance, and to find ways of pushing the boundaries of what we’re capable of, has existed for a very, very long time. And at one point in time, “the human experiments” that doping athletes perform were once even considered merely using technology in man’s quest to be better, faster and stronger. The perfectability of man/woman, if you will.

Dope should give readers a good understanding of the history of doping in sports, and how doping has grown to be the problem that it is today.

A bit about the history of the project: Dope came about as a lucky accident (at least, on my part). The editor I’ve been working with at Praeger/Greenwood approached me about the possibility of doing a project like this in September 2006, not long after Rant Your Head Off came into existence. Without this blog, and the fact that she was (and remains) a regular reader, Dope would never have come to be. Also, the support, encouragement and editorial input from my wife made the overall project much easier to get through and undoubtedly made the book vastly better. Before my editor ever read a word, my wife read over each chapter with a fine-toothed comb.

Quite a few people helped me in the research for the book, or by taking time out of their busy schedules to answer some of my questions. And a number of regular commenters here gave good suggestions for stories to include in several of the chapters. Other comments and suggestions helped shape how the book was written and put together. You’ll get a full listing of the guilty parties in the foreword. Hopefully, I didn’t leave anyone’s name out. If I did, I’ll make a note of it on this site before the book comes out. I’m grateful to all who helped me in my year-long quest.

Once the book is out in print, you’ll be able to download an Afterword from this site. Given the fast pace of stories, the Afterword will fill in some of the major stories that have occurred since I had to submit my finished manuscript. (Who knows, perhaps the CAS decision in Floyd Landis’ case will even be out by then.)

It was quite the ambitious project to try and write a book of this sort in my spare time. The journey is rapidly coming to an end. For me, the last bit to get done is the index. I’ve got three weeks to complete it. After that, all that will be left will be finishing the Afterword. Over time, the Afterword may get updated. If/when that happens, you’ll be able to get the latest version here, too.
Click the link in the right-hand column, or the link at the top of this article, to pre-order your copy today. Be the first kid on your block to own a copy of Dope.