
Please enjoy the Introduction chapter from Spitting in the Soup: Inside the Dirty Game of Doping in Sports by Mark Johnson.
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.
Shirley Babashoff is a two-time Olympic gold medalist — but it’s the four gold medals she didn’t win that stick with her the most. Forty years after her last Olympic Games, Babashoff still maintains that she was robbed by a Cold War-era doping regime that powered East German swimmers to victory over the Americans.