Sporting Vernacular 25: Steroid

LINFORD CHRISTIE must be wishing right now that he had never accepted the challenge of his coaching charges to take them on in Dortmund last February. Even if he clears himself, the word "steroid" will forever be associated with his name.

The root "ster-" is of uncertain etymology - though it is unlikely to come from the oddly appropriate Latin sterilis (unfruitful) or stercus (dung). "Sterol", as in cholesterol, signifies a complex alcohol compound. This came to be applied to a large class of substances with a nucleus of 17 carbon atoms. In 1936, Callow and Young, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, wrote: "The term is proposed as a generic name for the group of compounds comprising the sterols, bile acids, heart poisons... and sex hormones."