Cases of doping in modern sports have been recorded from the late 19th century onwards when European cyclists started to use a variety of "miracle" products to fight pain and exhaustion. The first recorded death from drug-use in sports occurred in 1886 when a cyclist died from an overdose of trimethyl. In the 1904 Olympics, Thomas Hicks, a marathon runner from the USA collapsed after winning the race as he had used a mixture of brandy and strychnine to enhance "endurance." By the early 1930s athletes had started to experiment with nitroglycerine in an effort to dilate their coronary arteries and stimulants such as amphetamines. (Francis; King).

             The real "breakthrough" in sports doping, however, came with the invention of steroids-injectable testosterone-by Nazi doctors, initially developed for promoting aggressiveness in soldiers. German athletes were also rumored to have used steroids during training for the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin where they won a majority of medals.

             Just as Hitler's Germany was so anxious to showcase the 1936 Berlin Olympics as proof of the "Aryan" superiority, the Soviet Union placed similar importance on sport success to underline the superiority of Communism after the Second World War. The easiest way to do so was through a government controlled doping program for its athletes. Hence in the Helsinki Olympics of 1952, the war-torn Soviet Union surprised everyone by walking away with a handful of medals particularly in weightlifting-an event previously dominated by the United States. ("Artificial Olympics") Rumors about widespread drug use by Russian athletes were further fueled by heaps of discarded syringes in their rooms at the Olympics.

             The intense competition between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War prompted the US to match the Russians in the sport-doping field as well. In 1955, John Ziegler, the physician for the US weightlifting team, developed the first anabolic steroid called Dianabol and started to give it to the US team's weightlifters who dominated the 1962 World Championships ("Doping sport").