The cocktail of poison and brandy that led to Olympic gold

On Monday, the World Anti Doping Agency (Wada) reported its findings on an investigation in to alleged Russian doping of their Olympic athletes. 68 of the country’s track and field athletes have since had their Olympic ban upheld and will not be competing in Rio. Wada’s report, however, prompted me to see just what substances the agency bans.

A substance can be banned if it meets two of the three following criteria: 1. it has the potential to enhance or enhances sport performance; 2. it represents an actual or potential health risk to the athlete; 3. it violates the spirit of the sport.

The list of substances currently banned is a long one, and the majority are exactly what you might expect to see there: steroids; growth hormones; substances that enhance red blood cell production or affect metabolism, and a long list of stimulants.

But, one substance really stood out for me - strychnine. Although strychnine is certainly a stimulant I couldn’t immediately think how it would enhance performance. It’s something I associate more with Agatha Christie, Belgian detectives and dead bodies in country houses. Strychnine certainly meets the second and third of the Wada criteria but so would arsenic, cyanide or any of the other classic Christie poisons, but they don’t automatically appear on the Wada list. Substances only get banned after an athlete is found to have used them or if their potential to enhance performance is obvious. The reason strychnine is on the banned list is because at least two Olympic athletes (that I know of) have been crazy enough to take it.

The first case of strychnine doping dates back to the 1904 Olympics Games held in St. Louis. Back then things were a little more relaxed. The sports events were essentially run as a side show for the much bigger World Fair that was exhibiting at the same time and in the same city. Recent games may have faced accusations of poor planning, and there has been no shortage of controversy during the history of the modern games, but the 1904 games takes the biscuit. For example, the marathon race that was run that year has gone down in history as the most chaotic ever. It was run in 32C heat on dirt tracks with no water stops (though there was a well at the half-way point). Only fourteen of the thirty two athletes who started the race finished.

The 1904 Olympic marathon made history for several reasons. It was the first to see black athletes take part: Len Taunyane and Yamasani (Jan Mashiani). Neither of them was registered as a competitor in the games and they had in fact come over to St Louis from South Africa to take part in the World Fair. Yamasani finished twelfth and Taunyane came in ninth, but might have done better if he hadn’t been chased nearly a mile off course by aggressive dogs.

Another competitor, a Cuban postman called Felix Carbajal, had raised enough money to travel to the games but lost it all in a dice game in New Orleans. He had to hitchhike the rest of the journey to St Louis and competed in his street clothes. The only concession he made to sports attire was to find a pair of scissors to cut his trousers off at the knee so they looked more like shorts. Carbajal started well but decided to take a break from the brutal race (a very hilly course and full of choking dust kicked up by the support vehicles traveling alongside the competitors) and stopped in an orchard to eat some apples. The apples disagreed with him and so he took a nap to recover. He still finished fourth.

The top competitors in the race were Frederick Lorz, a bricklayer by trade who trained at night after he finished his day job, and Thomas Hicks, a brass worker from Massachusetts. Lorz dropped out at the ninth mile and got into a car to be driven back to the stadium to collect his things. The car then broke down at the nineteenth mile and Lorz decided to jog the rest of the way. He was first to cross the finish line but was stripped of his gold medal when organisers found out Lorz had completed much of the course by car. Lorz claimed it was a joke but no one else saw the funny side.

Hicks faired better. He took an early lead but was soon flagging. Photos taken during the race show an exhausted Hicks being held upright by two men. As well as physical support, Hicks was also given chemical support in the form of strychnine. Strychnine is a powerful stimulant of motor neurones, those that control muscle contractions. Too much strychnine, around 100mg, can result in whole body convulsions that can kill by paralysing the muscles for breathing. The lowest known lethal dose was a mere 36mg.

Hicks was given approximately 1mg of strychnine sulphate and some brandy, which appeared to revive him, but not for long. So, he was given a second dose of strychnine. When he crossed the finish line (behind Lorz) he collapsed and was too weak to collect his medal. Much more “help” from his team and Hicks might have been killed. But he did recover, and lived until the age of 76, though he never competed again.

Despite taking a stimulant on two occasions during the race, Hicks was never stripped of his medal. Strychnine was not a banned substance, though this quickly changed, and even the brandy he drank was not a reason to stop him being awarded gold. He is still, quite rightly, listed as the winner of the 1904 Olympic marathon.

Even more incredibly, Hicks was not the last Olympic athlete to take strychnine. In the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Chinese volleyball player Wu Dan was found to have taken strychnine. The lengths athletes are prepared to go to win is staggering, as the many recent sports scandals have shown. As the spotlight turns on the Rio Olympics we can only hope no one would be desperate enough to try anything as awful as strychnine.