WinterSports2002.com - IOC strengthens call to toughen supplement rules

WinterSports2002.com, Friday, April 05, 2002

IOC strengthens call to toughen supplement rules

By Lois M. Collins
Deseret News staff writer

Based on a just-finished study of nutritional supplements, the International Olympic Committee's Medical Commission Thursday strength- ened its call for tougher standards. And it again warned athletes about potential problems if they use supplements.

The IOC had 634 nutritional supplements tested to see if their actual contents matched what was listed on the label.

During the Winter Games in Salt Lake, IOC Medical Commission director Dr. Patrick Schamasch called preliminary results "disturbing."

The final results of the study showed that 94 contained substances that not only were not listed on the label, but that would have led to a positive doping test for athletes who took them. Of those 94, 23 contained building blocks of both nandrolone and testosterone, 64 contained precursors of testosterone alone and seven contained precursors of nandrolone. Both nandrolone and testosterone are banned substances under IOC rules.

Another 66 samples returned borderline results for a number of unlabeled substances, according to an IOC release.

The IOC selected the 634 non-hormone nutritional supplements from 215 different manufacturers in 13 countries, buying most of them in stores or over the Internet. A few were obtained from manufacturers. Then the IOC-accredited laboratory in Cologne, Germany, tested them.

Of the supplements tested, 240 came from U.S. manufacturers and nearly 19 percent were found to contain substances not listed on the label. The Netherlands had the most tainted substances in the study, 25.8 percent.

The U.S. government in general and Utah's Sen. Orrin Hatch in particular have been criticized, both before and during the Winter Games, for "lax" oversight of the dietary supplement industry. Hatch sponsored the law that allows dietary supplements to be regulated as foods, rather than drugs.

Although the IOC's warning took aim at elite athletes, the fact that the public may unknowingly ingest precursors to hormones should be a matter of public health concern, according to Rich Wanninger, spokesman for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, based in Colorado Springs.

E-MAIL: lois@desnews.com