Knud Enemark Jensen's Death during the 1960 Rome Olympics - Coursework Example

Knud Enemark Jensen’s Death and Sports Knud Enemark Jensen was a young man in his early 20s at that time he became part of the Danish cycling team that represented the country in the 1960 Olympics in Rome. The Danish cycling team was expected to bag one of the top prizes for the 100-kilometer team event but instead, a meager $1600 was awarded the family of Jensen for his death in the Olympics cycling tracks. Instead of bringing home honor to his country, Jensen fell off his bicycle and died sparking the controversy that the sporting world was deep into performance-enhancing drugs. Rumors of an amphetamine-related death persistently accompanied the young man’s passing although official reports listed the cause of death as sunstroke fueled by subsequent confessions of no less than the Danish cycling team manager who admitted having administered certain vaso-dilating drugs to his athletes before the race. Although the public generally attached performance-enhancing drugs, specifically amphetamine, to Jensen’s death, there were others who looked past the rumors and abide by the official reports of the death like writer Verner Moller. Despite the uncertainties hounding the Jensen incident, it became the vehicle that catalyzed change in the course of history for the once-in-four year world sports. II Knud Enemark Jensen’s Death during the 1960 Olympics Knud Enermark Jensen was a bicyclist for the Danish team during the 1960 Olympics in Rome. At the age of 23, he became part of the four-man Danish team who took part on August 25, 1960 in the 100-kilometer cycling event amidst a scorching temperature of 100 degrees. The team was expected to get the bronze medal but at about 80 kilometers into the race, Jensen was spotted riding unstably from one side of the road to another. His teammates tried to egg him on to continue with the race so as not to diminish the team’s chances of winning. At 10 kilometers from the finish line, however, Jensen fell from his bicycle and collapsed. He was immediately taken to the local emergency room where he was found to have sustained a serious injury – his skull was fractured – and was feverish. He was subsequently transferred to a bigger hospital but he never regained consciousness and died after a couple of hours (Ronsen 2008). Traces of stimulant drugs like amphetamine were purportedly found in the bloodstream of Jensen although official reports did not so indicate. The rumors heated up however, when several days later, the Danish cycling team trainer Oluf Jorgensen admitted that he had administered the drug Ronicol to his athletes before the race. Ronicol is a vaso-dilator that is often prescribed by doctors to elderly patients to assist blood circulation. It was administered to Jensen and company purportedly to help blood flow during the race. It was common knowledge back then that professional athletes take drugs to enhance their performance in sports. The French trainer Robert Oubron himself stated in an interview by the New York Times that it did not come as a big surprise to him that Jensen took performance-enhancing drugs as it was a common practice among professional athletes. The French trainer’s tone suggested that trainers themselves prescribed and officiated drug-doping on their athletes (Ronsen 2008). III Jensen’s Drug-Related Death: Fact or Myth The official report notwithstanding, the rumor that drugs killed Jensen persisted helped by admissions of his own trainer and other Olympic coaches like Oubron. This was also fueled by reports that a year earlier Jensen also figured in a doping-related incident during the World Championships in Holland. A Danish cyclist fell ill during the event, collapsing just after he crossed the finish line. He admitted after the incident that he and Jensen took stimulants, given by another professional cyclist, before and during the race. It remains, however, that official reports did not point to drugs as the cause of Jensen’s death. On March 25, 1961, Rome announced the official results of Jensen’s autopsy where the three doctors who performed it stated categorically that heatstroke caused Jensen’s death and no traces of drugs were found in his body. Despite this, people always connected Jensen’s death to drugs that after sometime this has been elevated to the status of being a ‘fact’ in the public’s mind. Author Verner Moller labeled it as the myth of Jensen’s death. In his article “Knud Enemerk Jensen’s Death During the 1960 Rome Olympics: A Search for Truth,” Moller remarked that the power of the Jensen myth is such that even academics, professionals, writers and sports administrators repeat it as if it is a fact. The Belgian doctor Albert Dirix, for example, in swaying others to his anti-doping crusade stated: We doctors wish to prevent such tragedies as those which occurred at the Rome Olympics, in which a cyclist died and two of his companions became gravely ill as a result of doping; for it is a matter of conscience and nothing can be more criminal than to destroy the health or the life of a young athlete (qtd Dimeo 55). Even the Vice-President of the International Amateur Cycling Association Wlodzimierz Golebiewski referred to Jensen in 1976 as “This young man had taken a large overdose of drugs, which had been the cause of his death.” And the head of the IOC Medical Commission Prince Alexandre de Merode wrote “according to the experts’ reports, [Jensen] had taken a strong dose of amphetamines and a nicotine acid derivative, administered, rumour had it, by his coach” (Dimeo 55-56). In trying to ferret out the truth and elucidate the public’s mind, Moller rationalizes that it is unlikely that Jensen took amphetamines while racing along with Roniacol administered to him by his trainer. If he did, he would not have died because of it but rather in spite of it because amphetamine would have reacted to counter the ill effects of Roniacol. In Moller’s opinion, therefore, Jensen’ death was not or cannot be due to one single cause, like amphetamine, but an aggregate of reasons led by the extreme heat and the dehydrating effects of Roniacol (Waddington & Smith 236). IV Anti-Dope Measures Post-Jensen The level of controversy attached to the Jensen incident was high because it happened in the middle of a popular global competition being watched by millions. It thus succeeded to goad Olympics officials to act and lay the groundwork for anti-dope measures to clean up the competition. In 1963, for example, the IOC came out with a list of prohibited drugs called Prohibited List. In 2004, the List began to be periodically updated by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Karch 697), an independent international anti-doping agency established after the 1998 Tour de France scandal where the soigneur for the Festina cycling team was discovered to have kept in his car a veritable collection of all kinds of doping substances. The List includes, among others, stimulants like amphetamines but not vasodilators like Roniacol (Kolt & Snyder-MacKler 548). . Together with the death of British cyclist Tom Simpson in 1967 whose death was also attributed to amphetamine, the Jensen incident also inspired the IOC to create the Medical Commission in 1967. The Medical Commission was initially tasked to examine the extent of doping in sports and later was additionally tasked to care for the athletes’ health. It first banned performance-enhancing drugs from Olympics sports and later adopted a drug-testing program which initially focused on narcotics and stimulants (Kolt & Snyder-MacKler 547). The first full-scale drug testing of athletes occurred in 1972 during the Munich Olympics. Although the number of drugs being tested was still limited at that time (narcotic analgesics and three kinds of stimulants), the testing was comprehensive enough to have disqualified seven athletes (Mottram 237). In February of 1999, the IOC held an anti-doping conference in Lausanne which was attended not only by Olympics officials but also by sports ministers from different countries and the athletes themselves. The event led to the creation of the Lausanne Declaration on Doping and Sports. It was here that the WADA was first conceived. V Conclusion Knud Enermark Jensen’s death made a mark in the public’s eye because it was the first death in an international popular competition witnessed by millions of people. Although his death was not officially blamed on drugs, it engendered a myth that to this day still lives. The public perception that Jensen’s was the first drug-related death in the competition dramatized the need to clean up sports. It was his death that triggered the public clamor to institute a dope-testing mechanism in the hope of saving athletes’ lives and cleaning up sports in general. Today, the IOC has created several agencies to help police athletics in the Olympics and ensure clean and healthy sports. The IOC has, in the wake of the Jensen incident, established the Medical Commission which is tasked to administer drug-testing to athletes and the WADA which functions to update the listing of drugs and other doping substances prohibited for ingesting by athletes during competition. Although Jensen’s death had become, as Moller says, a myth because it had taken a life of its own making myth out of facts and facts out of myth, yet with the drug-testing measures presently instituted in sports, Jensen could not be said to have died in vain. Works Cited Dimeo, Paul. A Hstory of Drug Use in Sport 1876-1976: Beyond Good and Evil. Routledge, 2007. Karch, Steven. Drug Abuse Handbook. CRC Press, 2006. Kolt, Gregory & Lynn Snyder-Mackler. Physical Therapies in Sport and Exercise. Edition, illustrated. Elsevier Health Sciences, 2003. Mottram, David R. Drugs in Sport. Edition2, illustrated. Taylor & Francis, 1996. Rosen, Daniel Dope: A History of Performance Enhancement in Sports from the 19th Century to Today. 2008. 4 October 2009. http://popstaging.greenwood.com/document.aspx?id=C34520-184 Waddington, Ivan & Andy Smith. An Introduction to Drugs in Sport: Addicted to Winning? Taylor & Francis, 2009. Read More