Racing chemistry: A century of challenges and progress

Abstract

Horseracing has been called ‘one of the first quintessentially modern sports’. Its urge towards standardization, its mathematically set odds, its concern with weights, and its pioneering embrace of drug-testing reflect an empirical temperament crucial to its transformation from a gentleman's pastime to a global industry funded by wagering. Ironically, in the late nineteenth century, it was modern science itself, and in particular the purification and synthesis of the drugs of nature, that turned the doping of racing animals – a practice recorded in antiquity – into an organized criminal enterprise. This paper presents original research into the history of racing chemistry in Australia in the context of developments in the field worldwide. Using a case-study approach based on extensive archival materials, it reveals unpublished diaries kept by an analyst working at Sydney Racing Laboratory in the 1950s that document conflicts between scientists over identification of performance drugs in racing animals. The author presents evidence that augments and revises earlier narratives concerning the history of the establishment of laboratory control at Australian racetracks and the removal of the country's first official analyst for racing, Miss Jean Kimble. The Kimble case illustrates the inevitable political, professional, and personal pressures that bear upon drug-testing in sports, and also conflicts between scientists over standards and priorities. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.