IOC may retest '02 athletes

During Salt Lake's 2002 Winter Olympics, several athletes were caught "doping" — using banned performance-enhancing drugs, and some lost their medals as a result.

The 2002 Olympics may prove dopier still as the International Olympic Committee decides whether it wants to test stored samples of urine, taken from athletes during the Games, for a recently discovered designer steroid: anabolic steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG).

The IOC announced Oct. 24 that the steroid would be tested for in Athens' 2004 Olympics. On Wednesday, IOC medical director Dr. Patrick Schamasch told The Associated Press the committee is examining whether urine samples from the 2002 Games can be rechecked for the presence of THG.

The director of the Olympic drug-testing laboratory at UCLA said the lab still has 200-300 samples taken during the Salt Lake Games that could be retested if the IOC wants it done.

Both the World Anti-Doping Agency and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency support rechecking the samples.

"It's simple," Frederic Donze, spokesman for the Canada-based World Anti-Doping Agency told the Deseret Morning News Wednesday. "We are supportive of a level playing field for athletes. As soon as a new substance is detected, it is fair to every clean athlete to go back and test the samples to see if some athletes cheated by using THG."

Whether it's fiscally or physically possible is the question, he said. Each sports federation, laboratory and sports entity has its own rules for how long samples are stored. Testing hinges "on the rules of every stakeholder and the capacity of labs to test and store samples, and it is probably different for each."

In the case of the UCLA lab, storage doesn't appear to be a problem. Lab director Dr. Don Catlin told AP the lab has samples going back to the Los Angeles Summer Games of 1984.

THG was unknown to sports officials until early this summer, according to a statement issued by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, a key player in identifying the laboratory-created steroid. The agency got a call from someone "represented to be a high-profile track-and-field coach, who provided the names of U.S. and international athletes who he said were using an 'undetectable' steroid."

That coach sent the agency a used syringe containing some of the substance. The agency sent it on to Catlin's lab, which found the syringe contained a designer steroid similar in structure to other banned steroids but which currently used anti-doping tests would not detect. UCLA then designed a test that would identify the substance in urine.