Sergio Oliva talks Steve Reeves and steroids

[MikeC]

Can anyone tell me if the comment regarding Steve Reeves is accurate or an opinion?

Q: Could you relay your own experience with drug use?

Sergio Oliva: This is an area of great interest for people. I don't care who wants to take steroids, because that's a personal choice... that's his life. Now, today, everybody has access to them. I even saw in one of the big magazines that Arnold denies having used them, but Arnold was one of the first to bring steroids over to America. And everybody in the old days used them: Zane, Columbu, myself, Arnold, Larry Scott, Harold Poole, Dave Draper, and even Steve Reeves. There's no way to deny it.

It wasn't much, nothing like today. But the development of drugs is much different. I used decca and dianabol, and that was something really big at the time; and decca was not considered that bad. It was even prescribed by doctors to help make your bones strong. Today you have guys weighing 200 pounds, and six months later they weigh 250-300 pounds! So you know these guys are taking something unbelievable. When they say they haven't taken any thing, you know that it's phony.

[kitarpyar]

By all accounts, Steve Reeves's competitive career ended before the advent of steroids in sports. His physique in his movies, though impressive, was definitely not as good as it was during the Mr America, Mr Universe and Mr World contest.

If he did take steroids, then I envision one of the following scenarios -

1. He was a super-scientist and figured out steroid usage properly, and kept his scientific knowledge a secret from rest of the public.
2. If he used steroids post competition for movies, steroids pared down his physique
3. We have been lied to. The first use of steroids weren't by Soviets around 1952 Olympics, and American bodybuilders were using it way before the Soviets.

None of the above three makes any sense to me.

Anyway, its all a bit oxymoronic when he says Arnold was one of the first to bring steroids to America and then claim that Reeves was using steroids. Reeves stopped competing 18 years before Arnold came to States.

[TitanCT]

uhm...the russians were the first to use them in the olympics (a.k.a. organized popular sports)
steroids have been synthesized since the 1930s and maybe earlier...

[kitarpyar]

Originally Posted by TitanCT

uhm...the russians were the first to use them in the olympics (a.k.a. organized popular sports)
steroids have been synthesized since the 1930s and maybe earlier...

Yes, you are right. The first steroid was synthesized in 1931 in Marburg, Germany, for which the scientist was awarded a Nobel prize (and made to decline the prize by the Nazi government).

Clinical trials on human beings started in 1937. Apparently, Hitler had himself injected with testosterone derivatives during the World War (according to his physicians).

In United States, IIRC, the first known research on steroids started in 1954, resulting in the discovery of methandrostenolone which was marketed as dianabol. Ziegler, I think, was the person who pioneered steroid use among American athletes, and he was definitely after Reeves era.

This makes it unlikely for any American bodybuilder to know the effective usage for these chemicals as early as late 1940s - 1950 (Reeves's competitive career). If they did, it would take considerable ingenuity, knowledge and enterprise for them to get hold of steroids and use them.

[TitanCT]

Test prop was fairly commonly used by soviets in the 1940s. I'm pretty sure American scientists jumped right on board with trials as soon as Nobel Prize was mentioned. It's very common for scientist of all countries to start doing their own research on a subject as soon as Nobel is even mentioned around a subject. It's not as far fetched as Wikipedia history would have you think.