Quote:
Originally Posted by bnorth
I would say the crazy excuses people make for their heroes to took amphetamines(+steroids IMHO) back in the 60's and 70's. I had one guy tell me that taking amphetamines was like drinking a cup of coffee. 
Steroids have been around for more than 100 years and have been in sports for just as long. |
Amphetamine. is stronger than coffee. About twice as strong as Ritalin, which was basically like 8 cups of coffee at a low dose. Neither would help my hitting much, sadly something I can prove at a the local batting cage. (Doesn't help with running or throwing either, I'm still really slow.)
It's not clear how common steroids were in sports before about the 70's And I think they weren't common in baseball then. Bodybuilding/wrestling/weightlifting yes.
Amphetamines were big in cycling postwar as well as a bunch of other stuff. Pre-war there was a lot of misguided stuff going on. Cigarettes were considered performance enhancing as the "opened up the lungs"
And earlier they'd take stuff like low doses of strychnine.
Things were more relaxed early on. In the 1930 Tour de France rule book riders were reminded that "drugs will not be provided by the organizers"