Around the world in 80 injections

Former Juventus superstar Alessandro Del Piero was accused by a rival coach of bulking up through methods other than training. Source: AP

THE East Germans wrote the book on it, the Chinese Olympic team refined it, and now the question is: did Essendon also use illegal injections to take their performance to another level?

Professional sport is littered with stories of teams and players who have pumped their bodies full of all manner of substances in the quest to get a jump on the pack.

SOCCER

We very rarely hear a decent drug-related story in world football, but in reality the surface of the world game's use of mystery substances and injections has barely been scratched.

Cast your minds back to 2004, when French soccer legend Zinadine Zidane testified in a drug trial that he was given vitamins and supplements intravenously "according to what the doctor said", while playing for Italian club Juventus.

The murkiness doesn't stop there.

Czech coach Zdenek Zeman was coaching AS Roma in 1998 when he levelled his sights at Juventus, and in particular the A-League's recent recruit Alessandro Del Piero, who was one of the team's star players at the time.

Zeman said Del Piero appeared to have suddenly bulked up, and queried whether he could have done so without a little bit of chemical help.

Zeman's accusations against Juventus led authorities to take action, with a police search on Juventus' stadium finding more than 280 types of drugs.

NFL

The Bombers wouldn't be the first club to ask players to sign waivers absolving their club of any responsibility for the substances it doles out.

In fact, in America's National Football League, the entire competition has been asked to put ink to a liability waiver for a painkilling shot called Toradol.

Toradol is an extremely powerful anti-inflammatory that masks any number of injuries, aches and pains to allow players to take the field, but also comes with a history of side-effects, including kidney, liver and gastrointestinal problems.

One former NFL player said his team used to "line up like cattle" to receive their Toradol shot before a game.

But forget about the NFL finding out about Toradol's use (which is legal) second-hand - the league is actually handing out the waivers, seemingly in a bid to trump potential future lawsuits like those arising from the current wave of post-career concussion issues.

Former New York Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens was tried over allegations he used performance-enhancing drugs throughout his career. Source: AP

BASEBALL

You name it, they've done it in baseball.

And the list of big names who may have used questionable methods to gain an edge while engaging in America's pastime grows by the year.

Two-time World Series winner, 11-time All Star and seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens was last year found not-guilty of lying about using performance-enhancing drugs during his glittering career.

That was despite a trainer saying he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone. Clemens maintained the needles contained vitamin B-12 and a legal anesthetic.

Chinese swimmer Zhang Yi was one of four Chinese swimmers who tested positive for banned substances at the World Championships in Perth in 1998. Source: AP

OLYMPICS

It says something about how sorry China really is for their years of state-sponsored doping that the man in charge of the entire setup is still a celebrity there.

Chen Zhanghao, who was the lead doctor for the Chinese Olympic teams at the 1984, 1988 and 1992, finally broke a three-decade silence last year to admit that his athletes were human guinea pigs as China searched for the best cocktail with which to inject their way to gold.

Chen said athletes were only given illegal substances on a "voluntary" basis, but many athletes later came forward to say they had no idea of exactly what they were being given.

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