Being a professional athlete is no easy feat. Near-constant workouts can place immense strain on the body, and high-stakes events demand competitors to be at their peak physical form. As such, despite their illegality, it historically hasn’t been uncommon for pro athletes to turn to performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) to give them a leg up. While human growth hormones and anabolic steroids like testosterone and androstenedione are the most common PEDs of choice in the modern world, athletes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had a boozier approach to improving their performance: cocktails made from alcohol and strychnine, a.k.a. rat poison.
There wasn’t much research on strychnine at the time, and many coaches and trainers believed the toxic pesticide improved athletic performance as it increased the strength of muscle contractions. In large doses, strychnine could cause extreme muscle convulsions, asphyxia, and ultimately death. But back then, trainers combined low doses of the pesticide with high-sugar alcohols like Champagne or brandy to create what they perceived as an endurance booster for exhausted competitors.
According to Dr. Matthew Barnes, deputy head of the School of Sport, Exercise, and Nutrition at New Zealand’s Massey University, the use of alcohol during sporting events dates all the way back to ancient Greece and Imperial China. But its modern implication can be traced back to the 19th century when pedestrianism, a 450-mile foot race along a track, was popular. During these races, it wasn’t uncommon to see competitors guzzling Champagne for energy boosts at their
