Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} When Winning Costs Too Much Steroids Supplements and Scandal in Today's Sports World by Julian E. Ba When Winning Costs Too Much: Steroids Supplements and Scandal in Today's Sports World by Julian E. Bailes. Molecule of the Month August 2010 Also available: JSMol versions. Is THG anything like tetrahydrofuran, THF? No, THG is the acronym for tetrahydrogestrinone ((13 S ,17 S )-13,17-diethyl-17-hydroxy-1,2,6,7,8,13,14,15,16,17- decahydrocyclopenta[a]phenanthren-3-one), or 13,20-diethyl-17-hydroxy-18,19-dinorpregna-4,9,11-trien-3-one or 18-homo-pregna-4,9,11- trien-17-ol-3-one, a steroid. One of these? No, not an asteroid, a steroid - a molecule containing this ring system. Got it! So why is it important? It was the anabolic androgenic steroid, also known as The Clear, used by BALCO ( B ay A rea L aboratory Co -Operative) to provide athletes with a steroid undetectable by doping controls. If it was undetectable, how it is now known? And why was it needed? To answer the second question first � Sportsmen, weightlifters to begin with, began to use steroids as performance enhancing drugs after World War II. They started with testosterone. This is the natural male sex hormone, which has anabolic effects, building tissue and muscle. Did it enhance performance? Yes. Testosterone was abused during the Cold War period, when America and the Iron Curtain countries used sporting success as a symbol of national pride. Athletes also took 17-esters of testosterone. The undecanoate ester of testosterone could be taken orally, otherwise injections or skin patches were used. Why use anything else? Testosterone gets broken down in the body (particularly to androstenedione) whether by oxidation of the (secondary) alcohol group at carbon-17 or by hydroxylation of the rings. Testosterone Androstenedione. And excess levels of testosterone can be detected in drug tests. So scientists developed testosterone derivatives which were alkylated in the α- position at carbon-17, turning them into tertiary alcohols and making them harder to oxidise; also it became harder for enzymes to hydroxylate them, especially at carbons 10 and 16 ("avoiding liver first-pass metabolic degradation"). Methandrostrenalone (Dianabol) 4-Chlorodehydromethyltestosterone (Turinabol) Dianabol (methandrostenalone) was released in 1958 as an anabolic steroid that did not interact with the androgen receptor, though it still produced androgenic (masculinising) effects. Long term use could result in serious liver damage. The next step was Turinabol, which was licenced for clinical use in 1965. Turinabol could be taken orally and had the advantage of being metabolised fairly quickly by the body (reducing the risk of detection). The potential for liver damage and other health complications remained. Turinabol was widely administered to East German athletes and swimmers, who were told that the blue pills they were given were vitamins or performance-enhancing chemicals. East German women swimmers took 11 out of 14 gold metals at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, but their androgenisation (broad shoulders and deep voices) did not pass unnoticed (see the photo of the East German swimmer Kornelia Ender from 1976, right). Sadly many of the teenage swimmers have encountered serious health problems later in life. Other steroids abused by athletes included Stanozolol (found in urine samples taken from the Canadian athlete Ben Johnson at the 1988 Seoul Olympics), Furazabol and Nandrolone (MOTM October 2000). Stanozolol Furazabol Nandrolone. With all these steroids to chose from, why did people use THG? Once established anabolic steroids like stanozolol became detectable, some athletes and coaches sought to stay ahead of the game. Patrick Arnold was a 1990 chemistry graduate; he was also a bodybuilder, a powerful combination. He delved deep into the older steroid literature and identified molecules that had already been synthesised and tested, but never marketed, so-called "designer steroids". The three steroids associated with BALCO were Desoxymethyltestosterone (madol), norbolethone (both of which had been previously synthesised but never marketed) and tetrahydrogestinone, aka THG. THG was a totally new molecule. Norbolethone was originally known as "The Clear" as it was believed to be undetectable, since it had never been released onto the commercial market, and no one was on the look out for it. Norbolethone was identified in 2002 by Don Catlin, at that time the director of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Lab, in urine samples provided by the American cyclist Tammy Thomas. Madol Norbolethone THG. THG had never been made before, so it was even less likely to be detected than norbolethone. How is it made? Gestrinone was already known. It was developed originally [1974] as a possible oral contraceptive agent. Catalytic hydrogenation of gestrinone is the obvious route to THG. Careful control of conditions is required to ensure that only the alkyne group is reduced. One published route uses a catalyst of palladium dispersed over finely divided carbon, operating at 0�C to prevent reduction of the alkene groups, reaction being complete in a few minutes; alternatively, the activity of the catalyst can be reduced somewhat by "poisoning" with lead, and then the reaction takes 30 min or more at room temperature. And THG made the difference to the athletes? It is not known how many sportsmen took THG. Don Catlin is reported to have examined some 20 urine samples that tested positive for THG. Athletes implicated included the British sprinter Dwain Chambers and a number of Americans, including the sprinter Kelli White and middle- distance runner Regina Jacobs. The most famous THG user is Marion Jones (photo, right), who won three gold medals and two bronze medals at the Sydney Olympics in 2000; in 2007, she admitted having used THG and was subsequently stripped of these medals by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). The American baseball star Barry Bonds has also been linked with THG use but has consistently denied this (and has never failed any drugs test). How did THG abuse come to light? In June 2003, an athletics coach contacted an official of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, saying that Victor Conte, head of BALCO, had been supplying leading athletes with drugs; the coach promised to send USADA a "used" syringe that had been thrown away at an athletics meeting. The anonymous coach was later revealed to be Trevor Graham, subsequently banned indefinitely by the US Olympic Committee from using their facilities. Victor Conte Don Catlin. The contents of the syringe were passed to Don Catlin, who at that time was the director of the Olympic Analytical Laboratory at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) on June 13th 2003. His team of scientists followed the normal practice of converting it into the Me 3 Si derivative to enhance its volatility in the mass spectrum, but the resulting spectrum showed a large number of peaks defying identification. There was one clue, though, the presence of a small amount of norbolethone impurity, suggesting that norbolethone might have a similar skeleton to the unknown. Comparison of the mass spectrum of the unknown steroid with known molecules showed considerable similarity with the spectrum of trenbolone and gestrinone below m / z = 211, indicating common structural features. The molecular ion in the mass spectrum of the unknown had m / z = 312; accurate mass determination gave 312.2080, leading to a most likely formula of C 21 H 28 O 2 . This led to the conclusion that the compound was 18-homo-pregna-4,9,11-trien-17-ol-3-one, so this compound was synthesised to confirm that the unknown had identical properties. A baboon was given very small amounts of THG; analysis of its urine confirmed that THG was excreted and could be detected in the urine, which could be used as the basis of a drugs test. The laboratory went on to develop a test that could be used to establish whether a sportsman had taken THG, in time to identify it in samples taken from four athletes (Kevin Toth, Regina Jacobs, John McEwen and Melissa Price) at the U.S. National Championships in June that year. Dwain Chambers (photo, right), the European 100m champion, gave a positive test on a sample given on August 1st. Like the American sprinter Kelli White, he blamed Conte for supplying him with THG ("Victor explained it was a new product on the market that would aid me nutritionally"). White noted that, as well as affecting her menstrual cycle, THG gave her acne and changed her voice, not deeper but rasping. Although some THG passes unchanged into the urine, one metabolic pathway involves an oxidative hydroxylation at carbon-18, followed by reaction of the hydroxy group with a glucuronic acid. So THG does things to people who take it? Analysis suggests that THG has very strong anabolic effects. This conclusion seems justified in view of the musculature of those taking it. It is also credited with considerable androgenic properties. A comparative study of binding of four potent androgens, the natural testosterone together with synthetic dihydrotestosterone, methyltrienolone and THG, showed that THG had the highest affinity for the human androgen receptor. The crystal structures of the human androgenic receptor with three of these, testosterone together with synthetic dihydrotestosterone and THG, revealed that THG makes more van der Waals' contacts with the receptor than do the other steroids, due to the presence of the 17-ethyl and 18-methyl groups, explaining why THG binds approximately twice as strongly to the human androgen receptor than does dihydrotestosterone. In October 2005, Victor Conte was sentenced to four months in prison and another four on house-arrest, whilst in August 2006, Arnold was sentenced to three months in prison. When Winning Costs Too Much: Steroids, Supplements, and Scandal in Today's Sports World. by Julian Bailes, MD , John McCloskey. Get the real story on rampant steroid use, the latest developments with star athletes, and ways to prevent young athletes from falling into the same trap from this examination of the scandalous practices in today's sports world. Read More. Get the real story on rampant steroid use, the latest developments with star athletes, and ways to prevent young athletes from falling into the same trap from this examination of the scandalous practices in today's sports world. Read Less. When Winning Costs Too Much: Steroids Supplements and Scandal in Today's Sports World by Julian E. Bailes. HEALTHY MIND + HEALTHY BODY = TOTAL HEALTH. The Student Athlete Survival Guide , by Marc Isenberg & Richard Rhoads. The Big O: My Life, My Times, My Game , by Oscar Robertson. Never Die Easy: The Autobiography of Walter Payton , by Walter Payton. The Sixteenth Round: From Number 1 Contender to Number 45472 , by Rubin Carter. The Steroid Deceit: A Body Worth Dying For? By Jeff Rutstein. When Winning Costs Too Much: Steroids, Supplements, and Scandal in Today’s Sports World , by Julian Bailes & John McCloskey. I Can’t Accept Not Trying: Michael Jordan on the Pursuit of Excellence , by Michael Jordan & Mark Vancil. Women Who Win: Stories of Triumph in Sports and Life , by Christina Lessa. Uncommon Champions: Fifteen Athletes who Battled Back , by Marty Kaminsky. Breaking the Surface , by Greg Louganis & Eric Marcus. This Voice in My Heart: A Runner’s Memoir of Genocide, Faith, and Forgiveness , by Gilbert Tuhabonye & Gary Brozek. Gimp: When Life Deals You a Crappy Hand, You Can Fold- or You Can Play , by Mark Zupan & Tim Swanson. The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game , by Michael Lewis. Soul Surfer , by Bethany Hamilton. No Excuses! : The True Story of a Congenital Amputee Who Became a Champion in Wrestling and in Life , by Kyle Maynard. Problem Detected With Your Request. A problem has been identified. Your request cannot be completed successfully. If you typed in a specific URL, make sure your spelling, capitalization and punctuation are correct. If you were submitting a web form entry, go back and verify that the request contained no extraneous or special characters that could be causing the problem. If you think you received this message in error and you are unable to send your request successfully, please notify the webmaster. The Idiot's Guide to Sports Publishing. It's been a hectic five months in the sports world since the Boston Red Sox vanquished the St. Louis Cardinals to win their first championship in 86 years. By December, the talk was about BALCO and the grand jury testimony of Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi, with Giambi admitting to using steroids. By February, Jose Canseco's incendiary book about his own steroid use, Juiced, hit the bestseller lists, making baseball executives duck like a high, hard one had been aimed at their corporate heads. February also brought four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, for Million Dollar Baby, based on a book of short stories by F.X. Toole, giving new life to a battered institution. And the sports publishing industry has been quick to jump on each of these stories, with new titles keeping pace with the news of the day. They were known as the "Idiots," the 2004 Boston Red Sox who finally killed, vivisected, cremated, then buried the Curse of the Bambino in an eight-game end-of-the-season winning streak that clearly shocked and awed both the august New York Yankees and the incredulous St. Louis Cardinals. Never forgetting that baseball is not only sport but entertainment, the Bosox have continued their off-season offensive by taunting the humiliated Yankees, becoming what most Sox fans thought they'd never hear in their lifetimes—"Sore Winners." The publishing pile-on started last fall with the publication of Faithful by Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan. The cover photo shows Boston catcher Jason Varitek punching out the Yankees' Alex Rodriguez. Of course, the book became a bestseller. Perhaps the title that best exemplifies the push in Bosox books this spring is Yankees Suck by Jim Gerard. "Last summer," says Ron Martirano, associate editor for Chamberlain Bros., "Carlo DeVito, our publisher, came into my office and simply declared, 'Yankees suck.' But when I realized he was suggesting a book to reach out to all the Yankee-haters out there, what really struck me was how the chant itself was this universal rallying cry for disgruntled sports fans." Like many publishers of Sox books this spring, Chamberlain has decided to go the trade paperback route. "I'm hoping by publishing in paperback and keeping the cost down," says Martirano, "we entice people to hold onto it, if not for themselves, then hopefully for the baseball fan in their lives." Chamberlain plans to promote by having author Gerard do radio appearances as well as mailings to the myriad anti-Yankee Web sites. Another title in the same vein is The Devil Wears Pinstripes by Jim Caple, a writer on ESPN.com (Mar.). "I wouldn't say this is a pro—Red Sox book," says Brant Janeway, director of marketing/publicity at Plume. "This is an anti-Yankee book." Plume will have a 14,000-copy paperback first printing, backed by newspaper excerpts, Portland/Seattle publicity and scoreboard advertising at Fenway Park. The head "Idiot" of the Red Sox is center fielder Johnny Damon, and naturally his book is called just that, Idiot (Crown, Apr.). For those not familiar with Damon, his trademark is his shoulder-length hair, which, depending on your team affiliation, makes him look like either Jesus Christ or Charles Manson. According to Steve Ross, Crown's publisher, there is a "contract stipulation that Johnny not cut his hair until the book goes on sale." Ross adds that Idiot is "the only insider account of the Sox's miracle season from one of the players on the team." Crown plans a 100,000- copy cloth first printing, and Damon will be making all the media stops as well as hitting the bookstores for signings. Doubleday also has joined the idiot fringe with Emperors & Idiots by New York Post sportswriter Mike Vaccaro (Mar.). "Vaccaro did a very interesting thing here," says Jason Kaufman, executive editor at Doubleday. "He used both the 2003 and 2004 American League Championship Series as a running through-line and simultaneously interwove a brilliant, punchy history of these two teams." Doubleday has an initial printing of 75,000 cloth copies and plans include ads in the New York Times and the Boston Globe . In the mystical history between Boston and New York, both sides embraced the idea that their respective luck had something to do with "The Curse of the Bambino." The supposed curse occurred when Boston shipped Babe Ruth to New York for cash so the Boston owner could bankroll No, No Nanette on Broadway in 1920. The Babe's Curse has come into the popular lexicon mainly because of a 1990 book written by Boston Globe sportswriter Dan Shaughnessy called, naturally, The Curse of the Bambino . Shaughnessy's about-face tome, Reversing the Curse (Houghton Mifflin, Mar.), takes a microscopic look at the 2004 season. "Unlike other books that give the one-sided, often myopic fan perspective or revolve around a single player or focus only on the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry," says Susan Canavan, editor at Houghton Mifflin, "what distinguishes this is the insight and the perspective. To put it simply, this is the one book people should buy if they want to understand the 2004 Red Sox and what made them tick versus simply celebrating and appreciating them." Houghton Mifflin will be doing electronic media appearances and bookstore signings from spring training through Father's Day. Shaughnessy also vanquishes the curse for the younger set in The Legend of the Curse of the Bambino (illus. by C.F. Payne) from S&S Children's Publishing for ages 5—8. Another Boston writing legend, Leigh Montville, author of last year's definitive Ted Williams biography, says adieu to misery in Why Not Us? "Let's face it," says Gene Taft, assistant publisher/director of publicity for Public Affairs, "an opportunity like this only comes around, say, once every 86 years. This book is all about the everyman/woman fan. And frankly, that is the exact consumer we're targeting. I defy any Red Sox fan to pick up Why Not Us? and not find a story in its pages to which they can personally relate." The 35,000 first printing has been backed by media and bookstore appearances in the greater New England area. The Sons of Sam Horn, an organization named after the light-hitting Boston first baseman of the 1980s, and Eric Christensen have collaborated on Win It For. (Apr.) "This book," says Peter Bannon, president of Sports Publishing, "is a collection of emotional dedications from lifelong Red Sox fans to people in their lives who have been special and would take incredible joy from the team's run to the championship." It is particularly noteworthy because most of the proceeds from the book's sales will be split between the Jimmy Fund (the Dana Farber Cancer Institute) and Curt's Pitch for ALS (Schilling's charity to help Lou Gehrig's disease research). Book signings are planned for New York and Massachusetts. Tale of Two Cities (Mar.) by Tony Massarotti of the Boston Herald and John Harper of the New York Daily News was a work-in-progress throughout the 2004 season. "We were incredibly lucky to have the season end the way it did, with the Yankees dropping four straight," says Tom McCarthy of the Lyons Press. "This isn't a book that rehashes each of the games the two teams played throughout the season, but rather an account of the personalities, and the backstage dramas and feuds and politics, and the behind-the-scenes machinations of players and management of both teams as they wound their way through the season." Lyons is going the trade paperback route, with McCarthy saying that "back orders have been amazing." Both authors will be hitting the media in their respective municipalities. Rounder Records has been a Boston institution since 1970, and cofounder Bill Nowlin decided to get into the book business in 2004. In the past eight years he has written or co-written 11 titles on the Red Sox for both Rounder and other publishers. His big spring title is Blood Feud , written with Jim Prime (Mar.). Although a fanatical Bosox fan, Nowlin admits, "We started off planning a fairly dispassionate and evenly balanced view of the rivalry. If we were impartial and crafted a strong enough book, we thought we could get acceptance from both the Red Sox and Yankees fan bases." Rounder will be publishing a 20,000-copy first printing in trade paperback. "Naturally," says Nowlin, "we hope that the number of units sold will be at least double what they might have been had we published first in hardcover." Rounder plans to concentrate on Boston-based media. The "Sweet Science" retook Hollywood when Million Dollar Baby won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Originally published in 2000 as Rope Burns by Ecco, F.X. Toole's tome is now a movie tie-in featuring Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman on its cover. The trade paperback tie-in edition of Million Dollar Baby now has 60,000 copies in print. The success of Million Dollar Baby may indicate that a new niche in sports publishing is emerging. "It seems to be cyclical," says Susan Canavan of Houghton Mifflin. "Boxing seems to come into the zeitgeist periodically. It's part of boxing's appeal—popular then forgotten. But there is an astonishingly large and loyal boxing fan base out there, and the literature of boxing is something they have and will always keep alive." When you hear people talk about Cinderella Man (Houghton Mifflin, May), Jeremy Schaap's biography of Depression-era boxer James J. Braddock—down on his luck like the rest of America—visions of Seabiscuit come to mind. They are both stories about underdogs, and as Canavan reminds us, "You don't have to care a lick about boxing to enjoy it"—just as you didn't have to know a horse from a mule to love Seabiscuit . "The more I heard what Jeremy Schaap had to say about Jim Braddock," says Canavan, "the more I was intrigued. Here was this completely improbable story set against the backdrop of one of the most electric times in boxing, and arguably sports history. Braddock was every bit a man of his time, and his story is one of those gems we find so infrequently in publishing, the tale of a seminal moment in sports history that is little known and even less understood." Although completely unrelated to the book, a Ron Howard film about Braddock, also called Cinderella Man, starring Russell Crowe and Renée Zellweger, is set for a June release. Houghton Mifflin is planning a 50,000-copy first printing, followed by an author tour and major promotion. With the emergence of Cinderella Man , book and movie, and the new NBC reality series The Contender getting kudos from the press, don't be surprised if Shadow Boxers: Sweat, Sacrifice & the Will to Survive in American Boxing Gyms (photos by Jim Lommasson, essays by many, including F.X. Toole; June) gets lots of attention. "Most people don't see beyond the violence of the sport," John Gattuso, editorial director of Stone Creek Publications, says. "But to dismiss boxing as merely violent without also acknowledging its grace, its poetry, its blood-and-bone humanity is to tell only half the story. What we learned is that boxing gyms can be extraordinarily nurturing places, where kids—many of them drawn to boxing by violence in their own lives—learn to channel and contain aggressive impulses in an environment that stresses discipline, hard work and respect for authority. For a troubled kid, boxing gyms can be a lifeline." Shadow Boxers will have a 10,000-copy initial printing and promotional efforts will be based in the nine cities visited in the book: Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Portland (Ore.), San Francisco and Los Angeles. The University of Nebraska Press will be publishing Boxing Stories by Robert E. Howard, a Braddock contemporary, in April. Howard, probably best known as a writer of historical fiction and fantasy—and the creator of Conan the Barbarian—was also an amateur boxer who loved writing about his sport. "His interest in boxing is evident in the realistic, richly populated boxing universe he creates in these stories," says Heather Lundine, editor at Nebraska's Bison Books. "With them, he takes his place in a tradition of American boxing writers but always with a uniquely Howardian twist—a gritty brooding atmosphere and a reserve of humor that captures the often brutal ambience of the 1930s." Other boxing books include Rocky Lives! by David Finger (Potomac, Mar.), Pound for Pound: A Biography of Sugar Ray Robinson by Herb Boyd with Ray Robinson II (Amistad/HarperCollins) and Chaos, Courage, and Corruption: A Year in the Life of Boxing by Thomas Hauser (Sport Classic Books, Apr.). Seabiscuit, Gone but Not Forgotten. It's been several years since the Seabiscuit phenomenon, but publishers continue to explore the world of horse racing, producing more books about the sport every year. "I think horse racing has been a largely untapped area of sports publishing," says Judy Marchman, managing editor of Eclipse Press. " Seabiscuit helped bring horse racing into the public's and other publishers' consciousness. Horse racing has such a rich history and so many great stories to tell, and I think readers are responding to that, and so are publishers." The interesting thing about the new books on horse racing is that they are beginning to branch away from the celebrity horse and are taking a look at other aspects of the sport. For instance, did you know that $16 billion is wagered every year on horses? One book that looks at this phenomenon is Horseplayers: Life at the Track by Ted McClelland (May). "The interest for Horseplayers ," says Cynthia Sherry, associate publisher of Chicago Review Press, "was gambling on horses and the passion people have for all things track related. Seabiscuit showed one side of the track, but Horseplayers provides a view most people haven't seen before." Chicago Review plans to send the author on the Triple Crown publicity circuit—Kentucky Derby/Preakness/ Belmont. Another view of the track is presented in Race Day by Maxwell Watman (Ivan R. Dee, July). "We contracted for Race Day ," says Ivan R. Dee, "simply because we like the way Max Watman writes about horse racing. It's very much unlike the usual sports page stuff; it's closer to Liebling. Watman gives you a little history, a lot of atmosphere, plenty of personalities and the details of one of the great races at each track." Watman will also be working the Triple Crown circuit for publicity. Wonder what really goes on behind the scenes at the track? Well, check out the Insider's Guide to Horseracing by T.A. Landers (May). "With more than 40 years experience as a licensed thoroughbred trainer and track veterinarian," says Bruce H. Franklin, the publisher of Westholme, "Landers has written a quick, well-illustrated book that gives you just enough information to make horse racing more interesting and enjoyable to watch." Against the Odds: Riding for My Life by Jerry Bailey with Tom Pedulla (Apr.) tells how Bailey conquered a serious drinking problem to become one of America's outstanding jockeys, having won every leg of the Triple Crown. "Bailey is the greatest jockey in the world," Neil Nyren, senior v- p/publisher/editor-in chief at Putnam, declares flatly. "He's the Michael Jordan of riders. He's won every important race there is, and then won it again." Putnam plans major promotion as the author works the Triple Crown circuit. Eclipse has books that cover two-thirds of the Triple Crown. "With The 10 Best Kentucky Derbies [Apr.]," says Marchman, "we think we'll invite a great deal of debate among fans and help generate that all-important 'buzz.' " New York's Belmont Park is celebrating its centennial, and Eclipse is bringing out Belmont Park: A Century of Champions by popular equine artist Richard Stone Reeves (May). "Reeves already has a loyal following," says Marchman, "and we hope to spread the word about Mr. Reeves's artistry as well as Belmont Park's centennial."