
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.