ABSTRACT
Although the use of performance-enhancing drugs in competitive sport has a long history, the incident at the Olympic Games in Rome 1960 marks the starting point of the modern fight against doping. At those Games a Danish cyclist collapsed during the 100km team race and later died in hospital. He had received a stimulating drug before the race. The drug in combination with the extreme heat during the competition probably caused his collapse and death. The Rome Games were the first Olympic Games to be televised world-wide. To have a drugrelated death of an Olympic competitor exposed to the world was too much for the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Thus, the IOC created a ‘Medical Commission’ (IOC MC) which was asked to propose an action plan to combat the use of drugs in Olympic Sport (Dirix and Sturbois, 1998).
