| Salt Lake City |
 |
 |
| GER |
12 |
16 |
7 |
35 |
 |
| USA |
10 |
13 |
11 |
34 |
|
| NOR |
11 |
7 |
6 |
24 |
|
| CAN |
6 |
3 |
8 |
17 |
|
| RUS |
6 |
6 |
4 |
16 |
|
| AUT |
2 |
4 |
10 |
16 |
|
| ITA |
4 |
4 |
4 |
12 |
|
| FRA |
4 |
5 |
2 |
11 |
|
| SUI |
3 |
2 |
6 |
11 |
|
| NED |
3 |
5 |
0 |
8 |
|
|
|
|
Don't blame beef if tests show drug use, officials say
Excuses aside, only 1% of tested athletes have dope in system
By Lois M. Collins
Deseret News staff writer
Anti-doping agency staffers hear strange excuses for failed drug tests.
There was the athlete who's pretty sure he got steroids in his system by eating beef from cattle that had been given steroids. Another athlete said his toothpaste was tampered with.
Probably the most common excuse is that a dietary supplement must have been contaminated with a banned substance.
Truth is, said Rich Wanninger, a spokesman for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, it doesn't matter how the doping occurred. National Olympic committees (NOCs), international sports federations, the International Olympic Committee and everyone else who has a policy governing use of prohibited substances or methods eventually arrives at a single conclusion: If it's in your body, barring a medical excuse (with the proper forms filed in advance), you're guilty of doping.
It's a message Frank Shorter, chairman of USADA; Richard Pound, chairman of World Doping Agency; and Terry Madden, director of USADA; members of the IOC and others keep trying to pound home.
Otherwise, the testing would mean nothing. Because no one remembers the last time an athlete said, "Yeah, I did it," Wanninger said. Something else is always to blame.
Generally, the doping news is good. Although comparing the numbers collected by agencies is like comparing elephants to bananas, since they all have their own constituencies and policies, fewer than 1 percent of athletes tested are using banned substances, according to each agency's results.
Three weeks ago, USADA released its final numbers for 2001. Over the course of the year, USADA performed 4,716 tests (1,383 were out-of-competition, 308 were "short-notice" and 3,025 were event tests). For those tested, 17 sanctions were given for doping offenses in 2001 and another four sanctions for the year weren't handed out until 2002. They also had a few athletes who had medical waivers to use banned substances (WADA reports their blood tests as "positive," but USADA reports the ones with waivers as "adverse" reports).
The World Anti-Doping Agency released its numbers last week: Of 3,639 out-of-competition tests since April, 27 athletes were reported as "positive," including six that had medical waivers and one who should have but did not do the paperwork, so he got a warning. Sixteen were sanctioned and four are still being decided.
The numbers from both agencies include summer and winter sports.
The USADA numbers don't include testing they did under contract for the various international federations, for the three-nation Drug Free Sport Consortium or under contract for WADA. And the Salt Lake Organizing Committee now has control of the drug-testing reins until the end of the Games. Their numbers are separate, too.
So it's conceivable, said Dr. Doug Rollins, who is heading up anti-doping efforts for SLOC, that an athlete could have been tested multiple times. Or possibly not at all in the last year. But one thing's certain: No one gets to the winner's podium without a drug test. SLOC event testing includes the top four-place finishers in each sport and a random field of the competitors. And each athlete in endurance sports will be tested, as well, for erythropoietin (EPO).
E-MAIL: lois@desnews.com
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February 12, 2002
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