Moss: I took drugs (Stirling, not Kate)

BRITISH Formula One legend Sir Stirling Moss has admitted that he took drugs before one of his classic victories.
Moss, 76, who won 16 Grands Prix and was runner-up for the world championship four times, recalled yesterday how he was given pills by his Argentinian rival, the great Juan Manuel Fangio, before the Mille Miglia (1,000 mile) rally from Brescia in Italy to Cologne in Germany in 1955. He said: "Fangio gave me some pills to help keep me awake. I have no idea what was in them but they certainly worked.
"At the time all the other drivers were taking them. They used Benzedrine and Dexedrine, especially in rallies. They would certainly be banned today."
Moss and navigator Denis Jenkinson won the rally in their Mercedes 300SLR. Doping controls in sport in the Fifties were non-existent.

Moss, who was knighted in 1999, is not the only prominent name to confess to substance abuse in the past few days. Juventus coach Fabio Capello - who says he would like to coach England - also admitted to taking performance enhancing drugs in his playing career.
He said: "I took Micoren during the Seventies when I was in the national team. Back then there were some drugs that were not banned and Micoren was one of them. Everyone in the national team took it."
Micoren, used to increase stamina, is believed to have caused the deaths of three former Italian players. Prolonged use is said to affect the arteries.

http://www.mirror.co...-name_page.html

I know that fighter/bomber pilots were given the same drugs routinely during WW II.
Does this acknowledgement lessen anyone's opinion of Moss' accomplishment?
Warren

Originally posted by WGD706
...he was given pills... before the Mille Miglia (1,000 mile) rally from Brescia in Italy to Cologne in Germany...

Originally posted by FrankB

Me too....it went from Brescia to Rome (which rhymes with Cologne, so maybe that's where the confusion on the part of the Mirror writer comes in?)

You surely don't expect a rag like the Mirror to get its facts right, do you?

Hardly a revelation, as this story is as old as the hills and has been written about many times over the years.

Hold the front page!

Typical sloppy Daily Mirror reporting - the Mille Miglia was a race not a rally.

This is old news, the story has been in the public domain for about 40 years. I think Moss himself told the story in one of his early autobiographies, either A Turn at the Wheel (circa 1959) or Face to Face with Ken Purdy (about 1966).


Edit: others can obviously type faster than me.

Originally posted by WGD706

Does this acknowledgement lessen anyone's opinion of Moss' accomplishment?
Warren

No.

Amphetamines?

Originally posted by WGD706

Does this acknowledgement lessen anyone's opinion of Moss' accomplishment?

Well if, as Mossie says, everybody took those pills it doesn't make a difference ;)

And BTW - we tend to forget that this kind of doping use of was completely normal and simply not even frowned upon in many sports in those days. The great doping hunt and its ethical foundation only got its momentum somewhere halfway the sixties IIRC.

We batted this one around a bit a few years ago in 'The Most Nobbled Driver?' thread. The most relevant contributions were:

Originally posted by RSNS in ‘The Most Nobbled Driver?’ thread

They were Swiss commercial pills - Dynavis was the trade name - that were prescribed by the doctor. Fangio told him he suffered from thirst during the long drives and he prescribed Dynavis to him.

Fangio gave them to Moss and Jenks for the Mille Miglia and Moss took his. Jenks didn’t and Moss’s father had them analyzed, but could make out their composition.

This is the source to Fangio’s ‘drug pills’...

Originally posted by Doug Nye in ‘The Most Nobbled Driver?’ thread

DSJ was offered various medicaments before the '55 Mille Miglia epic, mostly by a friend of his who was a doctor of aeronautical medicine working at the Royal Aircraft Establishment and Empire Test Pilots' School at Farnborough. Jenks's great worry was motion sickness. He was told one product would stave off the symptoms...but might leave him constipated for a week or so. He thought that might be a positive advantage...

Jenks took the anti-sickness medication and it almost worked - he vomited once on the 1,000 mile drive...

Before the race, team-mate Fangio offered both Stirling and Jenks one of his 'magic pills' each.

Stirl took his and was flying for 48 hours before he imploded. He wrote in his diary after the race "Fangio's pills are fantastic!".

Juan never offered him one again.

Stirl asked Jenks what he had done with his pill - "Did you take it, bin it, or keep it?".

Wary of the effect it might have - certainly in conjunction with the motion-sickness treatment - Jenks had not taken it but he had kept it.

They both recalled Stirl passing it to his father - a dentist, remember - to get it analysed.

To the best of both their recollections, and mine, it was Pa Moss who came back with a report from the lab saying Fangio's pill included a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and some mysterious ingredient which we cannot properly isolate nor identify...

Whether this was simple embroidery of the story or not I do not know. I can't remember if we found the trade name 'Dynavis' noted in DSJ's stuff, or in SM's.

Essentially Fangio told me first hand that his pills were originally prescribed to him to fight the onset of thirst which greatly troubled him in his early races. He found they did more than that - they enabled him, perhaps with his naturally extremely slow heart rate, to achieve feats of stamina that younger rivals could not approach; the pills and hours of energetic football in the mid-day sun on the beach at Mar del Plata perhaps???? 'cos he did that too as his 'fitness training'.

Certainly in the great Carretera Gran Premio races of several thousand miles at a time Fangio and his compadres had tried chewing coca leaves in the high Andes to stave off sleep... I'm not sure if cocaine has that effect, nor what drugs commonly stave off the onset of extreme thirst, but no doubt others could now advise....

DCN

Originally posted by Doug Nye in ‘The Most Nobbled Driver?’ thread

I think I was one who started this hare running simply by saying that Fangio's "famous pills" would cause a tremendous fuss if he was around and using the things today, in the present frenzied and intrusive climate of opinion.

In his period the modern attitude did NOT apply, and there was NOT a high-profile problem with anybody involved in the sport/business.

It's of no more than passing academic interest to apply the standards and sensitivities of 2002 to the activities of those in the 1940s or '50s. Attitudes in period were very, very different, and they set the standards by which any history should properly be judged.

DCN

Hey, if I was in an open car for 1000 miles, I would have no qualms about carrying a flask of grappa or brandy, even today!

As Doug very well described in that thread.

..this is, of course, old news.

More recently Mossie (and Pele) have quite openly admitted to the use of performance-enhancing drugs...;)

Originally posted by Bernd
Amphetamines?

Yes, please.

Oh, I see...

Originally posted by Bernd
Amphetamines?

Most likely, yes. Amphetamines were available by prescription, certainly here in Scandinavia in the Fifties. It was given to people who had to stay awake for extended periods. Rally drivers, including my Dad on the 1954 Rally Viking, were given amphetamines by their physicians, and there was certainly no social stigma attached to that kind of medication back then.

I mean- weren't there times where doctors precribed medicaments containing cocaine (which was BTW also used as anesthetic)? Are all those peope who took them junkheads or using doping if athletes?

I'd like to hear anybody in their right mind, who knows anything about Moss or Fangio, claim they would've touched the stuff with 6 ft. pole if it was illegal or considered unsporting to take it.

It seems unsporting to me, but probably hard to argue in a sport where physical aptitude doesnt win the day.

Originally posted by Wolf
I'd like to hear anybody in their right mind, who knows anything about Moss or Fangio, claim they would've touched the stuff with 6 ft. pole if it was illegal or considered unsporting to take it.

Spot on, Wolf.

I had read the news as well, and shuttered my shoulders at it.

But Tim caught the occasion to unearth another great contribution of Doug with direct witness.

Not really earth shattering news !!

Originally posted by Keir
Not really earth shattering news !!

C'mon, they unearthed something that has been around for at least 40 years (I think Moss wrote about it in early '60ies)- now that's what I call 'breaking news'! I think next big revelation will be that World War II is over.

In my own rally days, the 1960s, when the local rallies were all-nighters, No-Doz was a common prop to keep the eyes open in the grey hours before dawn. It was, I understand, just caffeine. I never bothered, not because of any qualms, but because I already knew that caffeine didn't work for me. It still doesn't. Just a quirk of my metabolism I suppose.

Originally posted by Terry Walker
In my own rally days, the 1960s, when the local rallies were all-nighters, No-Doz was a common prop to keep the eyes open in the grey hours before dawn. It was, I understand, just caffeine. I never bothered, not because of any qualms, but because I already knew that caffeine didn't work for me. It still doesn't. Just a quirk of my metabolism I suppose.

One used to be able to buy that stuff in Motorway service areas, but it disappeared sometime in the Seventies, I think. I tried it on a couple of occasions with long country-length drives to get back to work after a distant yachting regatta. I sometimes use Lucozade for the same purpose nowadays - revolting stuff, but it stops my eyelids dropping. Like Terry, caffiene does not work for me. And as WGD said at the very start of the thread such medication was common during WW2. My Dad was in Air-Sea Rescue and told me they were often prescribed a proprietary drug called Benzedrine before 24-hour patrols. I believe it was once possible to buy that, too, quite legitimately.

As has been said repeatedly - it's all very old hat. Must have been a slow news day at the Mirror - sensationalist, but hardly sensational.

You can tell whoever wrote the piece was fairly ignorant of the subject when you read the first few words: 'British Forumula 1 legend...'

If Stirling was given these pills, maybe he REALLY thought the race was from Brescia in Italy to Cologne in Germany...!!! And after all, it's such a long time: who really cares?! The man was a real racing driver, with or without the pills...

Originally posted by Wolf
C'mon, they unearthed something that has been around for at least 40 years ... I think next big revelation will be that World War II is over.

WHAT????!!!!!

Why wasn't I told?

DCN (somewhere in England)

I think its till going on Doug, just in Economic/Political terms now, rather than militarily. Still us against the rest of them....

What do they mean, World War Two...?

APL

and of course the current occupation of Spain by British forces...

BTW, that Cologne bit- it's either his cologne was banned substance too, or from his description how he continued from Rome to a M-B function in Stuttgart, and then took a plane (perchance from Cologne) to London in one big stint (speaking off top of my head, my 'All but my life' is loaned to a friend). I think it's the way he described the effect of the pills...

Just to get one thing off my chest- knowing DSJ's perceptiveness and interest in driving, if there was effect of those pills that he percieved to enhance Stirl's ability or judgement or whatever, I'm sure we'd have read about it by now (in 'Racing driver', at least).

Did not Stirling told once that he wasn't able to get some sleep the night after the race (the pills' effect) and took the car straightaway to Germany?
I did recall having read once in El Grafico magazine here in Argentina that, after that long Gran Premio legs, it was hard to him to get slept, so he used to drink some beer with the dinner to get relax and finally sleep.
I think both cases are related... Do you think of drinking alcohol after getting amphetamines?

Originally posted by Doug Nye
DCN (somewhere in England)

A little bunker perched on the white cliffs of Dover on the look out for Heinkels.

Originally posted by Pablo Vignone
... Do you think of drinking alcohol after getting amphetamines?

Harrumph! Chance would be a fine thing

PdeRL

That would counteract it, no? Doesnt Amphs affect the central nervous system? So if amphetamines are raising the level of your c-n-s, and alcohol consumption lowers it (thats why you get numb/sleepy/funny when you're drunk) it would take him back down to normal at which point he'd just be exhausted from the day.

Just a theory.

Really I don't know - I just fancy a bit of fun!

PdeRL

Well, all I can say is that it's a good job he didn't mix them up with those other pills he takes... Would've looked odd on the podium... Is that a spanner in your pocket?

I'll get me coat...

Justin

Originally posted by Ross Stonefeld
That would counteract it, no? Doesnt Amphs affect the central nervous system? So if amphetamines are raising the level of your c-n-s, and alcohol consumption lowers it (thats why you get numb/sleepy/funny when you're drunk) it would take him back down to normal at which point he'd just be exhausted from the day.

Just a theory.

My dad used to take pills (rarely) to keep awake for long periods in the 1960's (Joke: What is the best thing about being a long distance truck driver? Only 4 more sleeps till Christmas!)
He would have a pill to stay awake and then he would have a beer to go to sleep. It worked for him.

Hi there!

There are not news for me. I read it somewhere some time ago... It rang bells when I read this thread but I kinda forgot it... Anyway, to me they're not drugs in our contemporary sense. And I don't really think they'd easily take drugs...


On another subject, Am very pleased to have joined here!!!

Originally posted by Doug Nye


WHAT????!!!!!

Why wasn't I told?

DCN (somewhere in England)

Doug, you really need to get out of the library more often, you go to Florida and you sit in the library half the day.

I am not at all surprised that Moss confessed and I'm sure many other drivers of those days who participated in the roadracing and road rallying events of those days did the same. If one sees what distances had to be covered is the short periods of time permitted and how less periods of rest were included, it is almost a miracle that the amount of fatalities within the Mille Miglia, Liège-Sofia-Liège and so on were not higher than they are.

I still wonder how Johnny Claes ever managed to drive for 52 hours, almost non-stop within the Liège-Sofia-Liège marathon that one year.

I can't imagine the current generation of rally drivers being forced to drive rallies in that manner anymore nowadays, provided that the highly tuned cars of today would survive such a punishment.


Henri

It wasn't only drugs. The 1952 Mille Miglia was won by " ~ the wild, tousle-haired Giovanni Bracco,well fortified by brandy, who drove like a man on suicide bent ~"

Originally posted by Henri Greuter
I am not at all surprised that Moss confessed - Henri

Henri - I'd be confident (hopefully) that you did not choose the word 'confessed' in the sense of Moss regarding himself as 'owning up' to some long-withheld guilty secret, but that's the way this sounds. In fact SM has always been pretty open about trying one of Fangio's pills, and equally about being pretty cheesed-off that the Old Boy only made them available once! No guilt - nothing to confess - different times, different standards...and an old, old story. But nothing 'to confess'.

PS - James - you must have been watching....

I can´t understand the point........It´s a very old story. It appears at "Fangio A Pirelli Album", Moss told that his father send the pill to a laboratory. It was a Swiss medicine called "Dynavis".
A friend of mine, who raced Maseratis as a privateer in the 50`s told me that Harry Schell before a race drank a strange mix. In the opening laps, he raced strongly, but at the laps passed his velocity decreased. Many other drivers of that time used brandy or other drinks to drive for many miles or hours..............

I think "pep pills" were also quiet common in F3 in the early '70s too...