Weightlifting legends and doping

Weightlifting has given the world dozens of legendary athletes and at the same time became one of the sports most affected by doping. The history of its records is closely intertwined with the history of anabolic steroids, anti-doping tests and politics. The editorial team traces the key episodes of this history — without romanticizing it and with attention to what it taught sport.

The Cold War and the birth of sports anabolics

In the 1950s weightlifting was one of the arenas of competition between the USSR and the USA. Soviet athletes won victories at world championships, and the American team, backed by Bob Hoffman's York Barbell club, looked for an explanation for their progress.

Sports historian Terry Todd, in his article "Anabolic steroids: the gremlins of sport" (1987), described a key episode: the American team's physician John Ziegler learned from Soviet colleagues at the 1954 World Championships in Vienna about athletes' use of testosterone. Returning to the USA, he began experimenting with the drugs.

Ziegler's collaboration with the pharmaceutical company Ciba led to the creation of methandrostenolone, known under the trade name "Dianabol", which reached the market in the late 1950s. The drug was conceived as an agent with a better ratio of anabolic to androgenic effects, but it quickly spread among athletes.

Later Ziegler admitted that he regretted his role. He watched athletes increase doses several-fold on their own, while the side effects became increasingly serious. This story became a textbook illustration of how a medical drug can turn into a tool of abuse.

The first tests and high-profile disqualifications

The IOC Medical Commission began systematic doping testing in the late 1960s. Anabolic steroids were added to the list of prohibited substances in the mid-1970s, after reliable methods for detecting them appeared, and were first tested en masse at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. It was there that several weightlifters, including medalists, lost their awards.

The 1988 Olympics in Seoul are remembered for the Ben Johnson case in athletics, but for weightlifting it was also disgraceful. Two Bulgarian Olympic champions lost their gold medals due to the detection of the diuretic furosemide, used to mask other substances, and Bulgaria withdrew its team from the tournament.

After every major scandal the federations tightened control: they introduced out-of-competition testing, changed weight categories and annulled old world records. In particular, in the 1990s and in 2018 the IWF rebuilt the system of weight categories, effectively "zeroing out" the record tables, some of which were in doubt.

At the same time, the testing system of that era had serious limitations: the methods detected substances only within a narrow time window, and out-of-competition control long remained irregular.

State programs and systemic doping

The most documented example of systemic doping is the GDR program. After German reunification, the biologist Werner Franke and former athlete Brigitte Berendonk made "Stasi" documents public, and their article in the journal Clinical Chemistry (1997) described in detail the state program of administering androgens, in particular oral-turinabol, to athletes, some of whom were minors.

The GDR program covered many sports, and weightlifting was no exception. An important conclusion was that doping could be not an individual choice of particular athletes but state policy, concealed under the guise of "sports medicine".

John Hoberman, in his book "Mortal Engines" (1992), analyzes how scientific approaches to the "optimization" of the human body in sport gradually erased the line between medicine and doping. His work helps us understand why the problem is not reducible to a few dishonest athletes.

• Individual doping:the decision of an athlete or their coach.
• Team doping:organized use within a club or national team.
• State doping:a program involving state institutions and laboratories.

Retesting of samples and the IWF crisis

The biggest blow to the reputation of weightlifting was the retesting of samples from the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games. The IOC keeps samples for a long time, and new analytical methods, in particular the detection of long-lived metabolites of oral steroids, made it possible to find substances that had previously gone unnoticed.

As a result of the retesting in 2016–2017, dozens of weightlifters were disqualified, and the medal counts of these Olympics had to be substantially revised. Most often dehydrochloromethyltestosterone (turinabol) and stanozolol were detected.

In 2020 the situation escalated: after a journalistic investigation by the German broadcaster ARD, the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) commissioned an independent investigation led by Richard McLaren. The report described serious violations in the federation's governance and anti-doping program, and its longtime president Tamás Aján resigned.

These events put the place of weightlifting in the Olympic program at risk. The IOC linked the discipline's future to reform of its governance and anti-doping system, which forced the federation to change radically.

The cost to health and the lessons for sport

Behind the medals lies a real cost to health. A scientific statement by the Endocrine Society (Pope et al., 2014) summarizes the consequences of long-term use of supraphysiological doses of androgens: cardiomyopathy, atherosclerosis, disturbances of the lipid profile, suppression of the hormonal system, mental disorders. Some athletes of the "golden era" faced these problems already in middle age.

The victims of doping were often young athletes who had no real choice. The GDR experience showed that the consequences, in particular virilization in women and reproductive health problems, can accompany a person throughout their life.

There is also a "silent" category of victims — clean athletes who lost to doping athletes and years later received medals by mail, having lost the moment of triumph, sponsorship contracts and career opportunities.

A positive consequence of this history is the modern anti-doping system: the World Anti-Doping Code, long-term storage of samples, the athlete biological passport. It is not perfect, but it makes systemic doping much riskier than in the 20th century.

Editorial conclusions

The history of weightlifting shows how a combination of politics, pharmacology and pressure for results can turn a sport into an arena of chemical confrontation.

Every improvement in testing methods — from the first analyses of 1976 to the retesting of samples from 2008–2012 — revealed the scale of the problem that had previously remained hidden.

The true legends of sport are those who competed honestly, and the lessons of the doping scandals should work to protect the health of the next generations of athletes.

The editorial team also recommends reading our materials on the history of bodybuilding in Ukraine, on oral-turinabol and its detection, and on the athlete biological passport.

References

1. Todd T. Anabolic steroids: the gremlins of sport. J Sport Hist. 1987;14(1):87–107.
2. Franke WW, Berendonk B. Hormonal doping and androgenization of athletes: a secret program of the German Democratic Republic government. Clin Chem. 1997;43(7):1262–1279.
3. Hoberman J. Mortal Engines: The Science of Performance and the Dehumanization of Sport. New York: Free Press; 1992.
4. Kanayama G, Pope HG Jr. History and epidemiology of anabolic androgens in athletes and non-athletes. Mol Cell Endocrinol. 2018;464:4–13.
5. Pope HG Jr, Wood RI, Rogol A, et al. Adverse health consequences of performance-enhancing drugs: an Endocrine Society scientific statement. Endocr Rev. 2014;35(3):341–375.
6. McLaren R. IWF Investigation: Final Report. McLaren Global Sport Solutions; 2020.
7. World Anti-Doping Agency. World Anti-Doping Code. Montreal: WADA; 2021.