Imagine injecting yourself with a strychnine cocktail to compete in the Olympic marathon (not even that would get me to run 26.2 miles!). That’s what Thomas Hicks did in 1904, but the scandal at the time was that there wasn’t enough to go around.
This sounds like a particularly frightening substance to ingest, but the tale reflects a timeless battle between the urges of human nature and those on a Puritanical rampage to “cleanse” sports.
