Spitting in the Soup: Inside the Dirty Game of Doping in Sport: Inside the Dirty Game of Doping in Sports

by Mark Johnson

Doping is as old as organized sports. From baseball to horse racing, cycling to track and field, drugs have been used to enhance performance for 150 years. For much of that time, doping to do better was expected. It was doping to throw a game that stirred outrage.

Today, though, athletes are vilified for using performance-enhancing drugs. Damned as moral deviants who shred the fair-play fabric, dopers are an affront to the athletes who don't take shortcuts.

But this tidy view swindles sports fans. While we may want the world sorted into villains and victims, putting the blame on athletes alone ignores decades of history in which teams, coaches, governments, the media, scientists, sponsors, sports federations, and even spectators have played a role. The truth about doping in sports is messy and shocking because it holds a mirror to our own reluctance to spit in the soup--that is, to tell the truth about the spectacle we crave.

In Spitting in the Soup, sports journalist Mark Johnson explores how the deals made behind closed doors keep drugs in sports. Johnson unwinds the doping culture from the early days, when pills meant progress, and uncovers the complex relationships that underlie elite sports culture--the essence of which is not to play fair but to push the boundaries of human performance.

It's easy to assume that drugs in sports have always been frowned upon, but that's not true. Drugs in sports are old. It's banning drugs in sports that is new. Spitting in the Soup offers a bitingly honest, clear-eyed look at why that's so, and what it will take to kick pills out of the locker room once and for all.

Genres: Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2016

About the author

Mark is the author of gay coming-of-age adventure Changing Trains, The Blanket Seller and The Expat Commuter.

Librarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Gina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book puts doping in context. It looks at the history of doping in sport, from the advent of professional cycling through the cold war and to the present. It explains the social and political reasons for today's attitudes and regulations around doping. The political and regulatory aspects are very America-centric, but the attitudes of various players (athletes, WADA, or politicians) should be recognizable to must of us in the West.

[R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted so much to like this book. I've been a cyclist for decades and closely followed Lance Armstrong's career (and downfall) - I was really hoping Johnson would have some interesting and helpful insights.
Unfortunately, this book is poorly organized, lacks a clear thesis and many of Johnson's points are poorly reasoned/supported.
To start, Johnson states that doping has been part of athletics for 150 years but wasn't proscribed for the first 100 years of that period. But he cites almost no evidence that athletes were doping in 1870 and inconsistently proceeds to provide examples of doping being proscribed prior to the 1970s.
He spends an inordinate amount of time discussing class distinctions and Pierre Coubertin's Olympic ideal of amateur competition. The thread of Coubertinian ideals and amateurism v. professionalism recurs throughout the book, but Johnson doesn't make clear how that supports a thesis.
When it comes to international competition, Johnson repeatedly asserts that the US government encouraged doping among US athletes because the US was losing the Olympic medal competition with Soviet bloc countries. That sort of assertion requires much more support than the vague innuendo that Johnson serves up. And it's not the only logical leap. Johnson takes a Nixon reference to "a rising tide of terrorism" and associates it with drug use. A more logical association is with the bombings and hijackings conducted by actual terrorists. And later, he asserts that 12 million Americans who served overseas during WWII were all "exposed" to Benzedrine. In fact, only about 9 million Americans served overseas; asserting that every one of them was "exposed" (does he mean "used," "was issued," "knew of"?) requires more than a footnote to a secondary source.
Part of Johnson's thesis appears to be that society (USA, in particular) takes an inconsistent approach to drugs - vilifying them when used by athletes to boost performance, but praising them when taken by the average citizen to treat medical conditions. But what is unusual about that? Most people morally evaluate a tool's use, rather than the tool itself (money is morally neutral, but using it to pay the rent or a bribe are viewed differently; a knife is morally neutral, but using it to carve a ham or a human are viewed differently). Why is it odd that society views drugs (a tool) differently, depending on the purpose of their use? And when it comes to the risks associated with a drug, it's perfectly reasonable for society to weigh the risks of EPO prescribed to a cancer patient differently than EPO taken by an otherwise healthy cyclist.
Johnson does provide a useful corrective to the repeated assertion that numerous cyclists died between '87 and '90 from abuse of EPO. He helpfully debunks the myth and shows how its inclusion in peer-reviewed medical journals has contributed to its unfortunate spread.
To the extent that Johnson's thesis is that society (and government) views drugs and sports doping hypocritically, I don't think he provides adequate support. He comes very close to arguing that doping controls should be abandoned in sports - if that's really his thesis, he shouldn't have hidden it behind muddled writing.

[Amory Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mark Johnson elaborates on a doping culture in sports for athletes to get ahead since the beginning of sport. From strychnine to EPO, Spitting in the Soup explores doping in sports and its side effects.

According to Mark Johnson the unraveling of doping could be explained as such: Doping was acceptable in the early years of endurance sports, shunned only for those using it to slow down, mislabeled as a killer in the sixties and seventies, villified as the years went on, and now is viewed as a cheating alternative to successful athletes.

Early in human achievements such as marathons, participants would come in for 'pit stops' of strychnine injections and sent back out on the course. This was standard procedure. Johnson mentions also the shameful usage of performance enhancement drugs to actually slow competitors down. Spectators wondered if drugs could actually determine the finishing order before the race even commenced. Use drugs and win? Totally acceptable though.

Then a cyclist named Knud Jensen died in the Rome Olympics team time trial which took place in 100+ degree heat, with no water, in an extreme distance, and subpar medical attention. Johnson gives his own conclusions to why Jensen died but it had nothing to do with amphetimines. (We don't know why Jensen died because his autopsy results are still sealed.) The world went bonkers over the blame that amphetimines caused his death, though, again, no public autopsy results.

On and on Johnson explores the villification of certain concoctions to make an athlete dominant while governing bodies overlook abstract equipment, which presumably would fall under performance enhancement. Johnson develops his point by exploring the usage of steroids during the Cold War and a win-at-all-cost attitude by country leaders during each Olympics.

I was fascinated each page as Johnson's research paid off. The information, though exhaustive, made for compelling reflection and reading. I highly recommend this book, though it's not really gift material. It would almost suggest the recipient were a doper. But that's one of the points Johnson makes throughout his book: Where is the line drawn in sports? What supplements (such as "natural supplements" protected by Mormon Senator Orrin Hatch) are allowed and why? What performance enhancement drugs are illegal and why? ("Drinking too much orange juice can kill you," said Dr. Ferrari.) This book teetered on five stars but was a bit tedious in parts. Don't let that mislead you. Read the book. Find out you're being misled from just about every other source in sports.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

From horse racing, to cycling, track & field, baseball, and literally everything else (even nootropic drugs help students "win" better grades), "doping" has been around since ever since.
With this book we discover that the actual history of the Olympic games is a fascinating, yet sordid tale! Not the BS we are force-fed about the ancient Greek games and the moral superiority of clean living athletes, but the actual history of the IOC, WADA, and other corrupt 'anti-doping' organizations.
As with all corruption surrounding sports, the grift, (money and power, mostly money), it is surprising that Performance Enhancing Drugs are not made legal as a means to truly clean up sports.
This book sorts out the organized grifters as well as the 'moral complexities' of being a winning athlete.
If you hold on to the belief that athletes such as Jose Canseco and Lance Armstrong are/were villains, you really need to read this book!

[Shayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an in-depth review of the history of drugs in sports. It should be required reading for anyone who thinks that drugs should be banned or that athletes are cheaters if they are caught doing drugs, it is much more complicated than the "bad" guys and the "good" guys.

The truth about drugs in sports is messy and complex, a mix of politics, history, money and results. Drugs have always been in sports, what is new, is that now they are frowned upon. Up until quite recently, it was expected that athletes would do whatever it took to win.

With pharmaceutical and supplement companies pushing their products, and a majority of adults taking what they believe to be performance enhancing elixirs, it makes it harder to make the case that athletes are villains if they test positive.

[stijepan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a very schematic and linear recollection of the use of chemicals in sport, specifically in cycling; before and after they were considered doping; it revolves around values, ideals and missions of different anti-doping institutions, as well as programmed doping in cold war era, and other advancements, right till today's genetic doping growing.
Great book to read if you are interested in the theme.

[Robert Meade · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book, well researched going all the way back to the Cold War and the Olympics where doping programs started and mainly in Eastern Block countries and the USA also. It is not just about professional cycling although professional cycling and the Olympics are both probably the dirtiest examples. Some parts of the book do become long and drawn out which only proves it is a well researched book.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The highest honor I can think of for a book is that it changes your narrative of the world. This one does that. It's long, but fascinating.

[Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book. I’ll save you the drama. Jim Ochowicz managed Heim Verbruggen’s money from 1999 on...

[Brian Hallam · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED IT! Learned so much about doping in sport from a historical lens.

[Drew Geer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing history of doping in sport. Nothing at all like you would imagine or have been led to believe. A true eye opener. A must read.