Mortal Engines: The Science of Performance and the Dehumanization of Sport

Athletes' use of steroids, testosterone and other drugs to boost performance reflects an obsesson with winning at any cost, observes Hoberman, who maintains that the age-old ideals of sportsmanship prevalent less than a century ago have been replaced by dehumanized, often brutal competition. This eye-opening study traces the efforts of scientists, trainers and doctors to adapt athletes to ever-increasing levels of stress. Chapters cover the birth of sports physiology around 1890; anthropological theories of racial variation; the politics of contemporary drug use; the myth of robotized communist athletes; and the shameful drugging, electroshock treatments and physical torture applied to racehorses. Hoberman, a runner for 20 years and a language professor at the University of Texas, cogently argues that modern sports psychology, based on the romantic myth that athletes can be liberated from inner blocks, has scarcely advanced beyond its 19th-century prototypes. He also blasts the Olympics for managerial indifference to athletes' drug use. (July)