Spitting in the Soup

Please enjoy the Introduction chapter from Spitting in the Soup: Inside the Dirty Game of Doping in Sports by Mark Johnson.

The Red Kite Prayer podcast spoke with Mark Johnson about sports doping.

Boston University has just profiled BU alum Mark Johnson.

Was Dr. Ferrari right about doping? Is it a black and white issue? The VeloNews Podcast hosts are joined by Mark Johnson.

When President Jimmy Carter created the U.S. Olympic Committee, it sent American sports doping underground.

Mark Johnson spoke to students and faculty at the University of California San Diego about the history, culture, and economics of sports doping.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is in crisis control. Again. Its latest fiasco concerns the Russian-based hacker outfit Fancy Bears, who have done sport a huge service, according to New Daily.

Mark Johnson will speak at the University of California San Diego on October 20.

Spitting in the Soup author Mark Johnson speaks with Scott Warr of Trail Runner Nation about doping in endurance sports.

In this episode of the Outside podcast, Mark Johnson speaks with Outside Magazine and argues that performance-enhancing drugs are hardly a new thing.

Cyclingtips.com has republished a chapter from Mark Johnson's new book Spitting in the Soup: Inside the Dirty Game of Doping in Sports.

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.

There’s a renewed discussion about doping at the Olympic Games, since a moment earlier this week when American swimmer Lilly King chided a Russian competitor who had been banned for drug use.

Cycling website Pezcyclingnews offers this review of Spitting in the Soup by Mark Johnson.

Spitting in the Soup author Mark Johnson is interviewed on PRI's The World about Lilly King, the teen-aged American breaststroker who shamed a Russian by winning gold.

Sports Coach Radio is a series of weekly in-depth interview with world-class sports coaches, scientists and writers, hosted by Glenn Whitney.

Dr. Mark Shapiro is host of the Explore the Space podcast, which is dedicated to discussion the gap between healthcare providers and those seeking care.

Long-time cyclist and author Mark Johnson came on to Babbittville to chat about his new book Spitting in the Soup: Inside the Dirty Game of Doping in Sports.

Men's Journal spoke with Mark Johnson about the truth behind performance-enhancing drugs, and what it will take for elite athletes to come clean.

Mark Johnson has written a story for the Washington Post offering a historical perspective on the International Olympic Committee decision on Russian doping.

Mark Johnson says that allowing athletes to use any and all performance-enhancing drugs in the Olympics isn’t any more crazy than what comes from the current system in place.

Mark Johnson says that doping culture has persisted despite nearly 50 years of efforts to weed it out.

CBC Interviews Mark Johnson: Should Russia be banned from the Olympics following McLaren doping report?

Is there some level of hypocrisy in our official expectation of drug-free games?

In Spitting in the Soup, sports journalist Mark Johnson explores how the deals made behind closed doors keep drugs in sports.

The morning of August 30, 1904, dawned hot and humid in St. Louis, Missouri. The United States was hosting its first Olympic Games, and it was as if an oppressive blanket had been lowered over the Missis­sippi River town for a signature event, the marathon. Fourteen miles into the race, runner Charles Hicks—British-born but representing the United States—doubled over on the side of a road in what a reporter called “sweltering heat and clouds of dust.”

Take a look at Spitting in the Soup, one chapter at a time.

In one day, public perception of doping changed from a professional expectation to a dangerous, bad practice. Why? It was shoddy medical records and sloppy media coverage of a cyclist's death by heatstroke at the 1960 Rome Olympics.

Half of Americans take dietary supplements, yet the industry is protected from federal food and drug safety regulation by Sen. Orrin Hatch and others despite studies that show supplements are often mislabeled or tainted with huge doses of doping agents. The U.S. Olympic Committee was caught up in this soup during the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games.

Mark Johnson joins Worldview to talk about the origins of doping in sports and the implications of a total Russian ban at this summer’s Olympics.

Society holds athletes to a strange double-standard when it comes to drugs and performance. “We have completely normalized doping in everyday American life,” says Mark Johnson.

Mark Johnson asks and answers such questions as: How, why, and when did we become so indignant and disgusted with athletic doping? What does it say about us and our society as a whole? How have these attitudes shifted over time? And, are you certain we as a society aren’t somewhat complicit?

Argyle Armada author Mark Johnson has spent the last two years researching and writing a comprehensive look at doping, called “Spitting in the Soup,” published by VeloPress. Red Kite Prayer has been hearing about this book for a good year and has eagerly awaited its release.

The amateur ethos that still informs the Olympic sports runs counter to the very nature of sport, which demands high performance. The increasing commercialization of sports intensifies this tension—and the insidious temptation of corruption. The spirit of sport is a recent WADA invention, not an inherent quality of sport—but it’s still worth the aspiration.

EPO deaths made for good news stories, even if there was no autopsy evidence that EPO was actually killing cyclists.

Spitting in the Soup details how doping is much more than a problem of corrupt individual athletes. Doping Correspondent John Oliver from Last Week Tonight agrees.