Now I Know by Dan Lewis Page A

breaking a bone (commonly a toe, as mentioned above) below the point of the spinal injury, or overfilling one’s bladder via a clamped catheter. And for these athletes, the increased endurance they get from this is real—a study in the journal
Nature
stated that “the efficacy of boosting was a resulting significant decrease in race time with a mean improvement of 9.7% in race performance.”
    In 1994, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) banned boosting—but because it’s hard to catch, it still happens widely. In 2012, the BBC reported that the IPC conducted a survey during the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing, and 17 percent of athletes (anonymously) admitted to boosting at least once in their careers.
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    BONUS FACT
    The name “Paralympics” has nothing to do with paraplegia. The prefix para- is derived from a Greek word meaning “alongside,” as, since 1988 in Seoul, South Korea, the Paralympics are played in the same year and city as the main Olympic Games. (The term “paralegal” has the same etymology, meaning a person who works alongside lawyers.)
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    DOUBLE BONUS!
    PED use in cycling has a long history—just ask the late Henri Desgrange, credited with founding the Tour de France. According to Wikipedia, when Desgrange issued the rule book for the 1930 Tour, he specifically noted that performance-enhancing drugs would not be provided by race organizers, implying that racers were to seek their own.
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WOOD MEDALIST
THE OLYMPIAN WHO BROKE THE PROSTHETICS BARRIER
    The third modern Summer Olympics took place in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1904. In total, these Olympic Games lasted months, coinciding with the World’s Fair which St. Louis hosted that same year. The now-familiar men’s gymnastics competition occurred primarily on October 28 of that year, well past the end of the summer. It lasted one day, with eight events plus an awards ceremony for combined excellence in the parallel bars, horizontal bar, vault, and pommel horse.
    The number and nationalities of most of the competitors is unknown, lost to antiquity. All we know are the names of the medalists—all of them American—and where they placed. Two men, Anton Heida (five golds, one silver) and George Eyser (three golds, two silvers, and a bronze) took home medals in six events—not a bad day. Heida fared better than Eyser; he also had a distinct advantage over the second-best man that day. Unlike Eyser, Heida had two legs.
    In 1848, a spate of revolutions spread through Europe, mostly fueled by the middle class. In Germany, one such revolution was led by a group called the Turnverein—literally, the “gymnastic unions.” These groups were comprised of mostly working-class males who, beyond gathering to learn the art of gymnastics, also found a common bond in politics. But when the revolution of 1848 failed, the gymnasiums closed and many Turnverein left Germany. Most ended up in the United States, where they became a group called the Turners.
    George Eyser was born in Germany in 1870 and emigrated to the St. Louis area at age fourteen. Sometime during his adolescence, likely before his family left Germany (although much of Eyser’s biography is unknown), he lost his left leg after being hit by a train. He was outfitted with a wooden prosthesis, allowing him to run, jump, and otherwise participate in many athletics. The Turners were the prevailing German-American social circle in St. Louis at the time. If you were German, gymnastics was part and parcel of the St. Louis community experience, and Eyser’s lack of a left leg did not change this at all.
    Eyser’s experience as a gymnast paid off. Even though the competitors in the 1904 Olympics were, compared to today’s athletes, rank amateurs—the Games simply did not have the draw or importance that they’d later develop—Eyser dominated. He took gold metals on the parallel bars, vault (tying with Heida), and in the long-discontinued twenty-five-foot rope climb. He also took