Race against drug cheats

The latest Olympic disgrace shows that athletes are swift to use medical breakthroughs, writes PETER JESSUP.

It is a curious fact that national sports bodies which sign international agreements on drug testing and make sanctimonious claims about stamping out abuse and punishing cheats will invariably do one of two things when one of their own is caught - go quiet or deny it.

So it was with German/Spaniard Johann Muehlegg and Russian Larisa Lazutina when the cross-country skiers returned positives for the latest rocket fuel on the scene, the red-blood-cell-boosting darbepoetin.

"We know that she is innocent and we are prepared to fight this doping conviction in court," said Russia's Salt Lake Olympics chef de mission Viktor Mamatov of Lazutina.

And Spain's minister of sport, Pilar del Castillo, on Muehlegg: "Whatever the circumstances, he is an exceptional athlete. I must stress that the Spanish Government is completely opposed to drug-taking in sport, but we should also congratulate ourselves because we have rightly saved Muehlegg's first two gold medals."

The 31-year-old went to the Albertville, Lillehammer and Nagano Olympics and finished seventh, ninth and seventh in the 50km race. Then, in 2001, past the age of 28 that is considered a skier's peak, he became world champion.

In the Winter Olympics Muehlegg, who currently holds second placing in the World Cup series, won gold in the 30km freestyle and the combined pursuit and Lazutina won silver in the 5 and 15km races. Both will keep those medals because they were tested pre-race and returned negatives. But both have forfeited the medals they won in the long distance events, Muehlegg at 50km and Lazutina at 30km.

Muehlegg maintains his innocence and has blurted out a variety of reasons for the dope result. Diet, he said first. Then it was altitude, the ups and downs of training and competition having altered his blood. Then diarrhoea.

All are excuses up there with excuses previously offered by others - eating boar's testicles, performing oral sex on a pregnant girlfriend, the contraceptive pill, dietary supplements, eating hormone-contaminated meat and mystery muesli bars.

You'd have to eat a whole heavily hormoned cow in one sitting to ingest sufficient steroid to fail an IOC test. And there is only one way for darbepoetin to enter the body, by injection or ingestion. Unlike its close relation, erythropoetin (EPO), it does not occur naturally in even minute quantities. It cannot be absorbed.

So Muehlegg and Lazutina are guilty, yet condemnation appears unlikely. Those battling the drug cheats take another body-blow.

Muehlegg, Lazutina, her team-mates Olga Danilova, who was excluded from the Games after testing positive for the same drug and sent home with the gold she had already won, and Natalia Baranova-Masalkina, barred from competing after an out-of-competition positive, are the tip of a new iceberg.

Darbepoetin was developed only a year ago, initially to help cancer patients who were suffering reduction in red blood-cell production as a result of chemotherapy. Doctors found it had wider uses and have been treating a variety of anaemia-related kidney ailments.

But drug users in sport are unbelievably quick to see every pharmaceutical opportunity. In the middle of last year, just months after its release by American manufacturers, darbepoetin was found by Italian police who raided hotel rooms of cycling team members competing on the Gira d'Italia. Under the brand name Aranesp, it can be found on the internet.

New Zealand authorities are sure it has not been readily available here. But there's nothing to stop an individual bringing in an amount specified on a prescription - even if the amount is regarded as excessive.

Like EPO, which first showed up at the Tour de France in 1998, darbepoetin increases the oxygen-carrying ability of the blood and thus aids stamina and recovery time. Its advantage over EPO is that it is 10 times more powerful and disperses from the body more rapidly. The first method of testing is via blood; if abnormalities show, a urine sample is taken.

The New Zealand Sports Drug Agency operates under its own act of parliament and, like other legislation worldwide, it is behind the play. Darbepoetin is not specifically listed on the International Olympic Committee register of banned substances but action was taken to expel the Salt Lake users via regulations for EPO "and related substances". New Zealand authorities have no legal right to demand the blood samples that uncover the cheats, the legislation allowing collection of bodily fluid and tissue but stipulating and detailing only urine collection.

There's another problem with EPO and it's one that extends to other performance-enhancers - because it occurs naturally authorities are obliged to set a tolerance limit and this limit is set at unnaturally high levels.

Testosterone levels are measured against epitestosterone, with the average citizen at one-to-one. The IOC anti-doping code sets a level of six-to-one. The reason is to allow for all physiological and pathological conditions that might result in that high level. The result is a huge window of opportunity for those who have a normal level but are inclined to dope up to the allowable.

It's a window that has clearly been exploited. The stanozolol and nandrolone that tainted the Olympics from Montreal in 1976 onwards have given way to 19-norandrostendiol and 19-norandrostendione. The early models, developed from veterinary steroids, were fat-soluble and so traces would accumulate in fatty tissue, showing up in testing as much as 12 months after injection.

The new ones are water-soluble and pass through the body more quickly. Even better, they are not the banned substance itself but once taken "metabolise" within the body to turn into it. Drug testers look for the broken-down metabolites that collect in the kidneys but find it harder than with the earlier drugs to prove conclusively they were not naturally occurring.

At the last Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, 621 competitors were specifically tested for nandrolone; all bar five returned levels of less than 0.1 nanograms per millilitre of urine. Women have a naturally higher level and all five above 0.1ng were women. But the IOC then set its level for a positive at 2ng/ml for men and 5ng/ml for women.

Over the past couple of years positives have been returned by five Great Britain athletics team members including Olympic medal winners Linford Christie and Mark Richardson, the Czech world women's throwing champ Mihaela Melinte, Russian middle-distance runner Olga Yegarova, tennis star Petr Korda, Jamaican sprinter Merlene Ottey and American thrower C.J. Hunter.

St Louis baseball star Mark McGwire, whose 70-homer record was beaten last season, openly proclaimed the value of a food supplement containing the drug. Nicknamed "Andro", the supplement is allowed by the American baseball leagues and is available via the internet and through mail order. Powerlifting magazines are full of glossy adverts with McGwire and others proclaiming its abilities to lift performance.

At a minimum $300 each drug tests are not cheap. That's for a basic urine examination for the likes of nandrolone and testosterone. An EPO test is around twice that price.

The NZSDA tested 1364 athletes last year in sports ranging from archery to yachting. There were nine positives and six refusals, which is regarded as a positive.

Athletes were questioned by the agency on perceived drug use with 27 per cent agreeing they knew of drug cheats in their sport, 57 per cent denying any knowledge and 16 per cent not answering or giving "do not know" answers.

Steele believes New Zealand is lucky in that there is no "culture" of drug cheating and condoning of it here. "We don't think it's widespread. It is not supported or condoned by national sporting bodies."

Overseas, the issue is less clear. Kiwi athletes who have suffered the indignity of being under a tester's eye while having to pass urine tell of those from other nationalities who are given the sample bottle and asked to return it when ready.

There were widespread reports at the Sydney Olympics that United States authorities had ignored a range of pre-Games positives.

On the day Marion Jones and husband C.J. Hunter fronted the Games media, he crying as he denied he had taken nandrolone despite returning a level 100 times the norm, I was at the athletics training track.

A female sprinter from the Great Britain team was only too happy to point out those she knew were "on it." Management knew, she said, but wanted medals, which would bring government finance, sponsors, reflected glory.

The history of drug use by East Europeans was driven less by individual athletes than by sports officials and the speed with which medical breakthroughs are turned to sporting use suggests this has not been reversed.

The scale of the problem showed when 27 Chinese swimmers withdrew from Sydney when the organisers announced they would be testing for EPO for the first time. The Bulgarian weightlifting team was sent home after most of its members were caught.

There are 24 IOC-accredited laboratories worldwide, one of the most advanced the Australian Sports Drug Agency in Canberra. They didn't find any EPO cheats at Sydney but believe many using the drug pulled out of the Games when testing started.

Already they've heard of further derivatives, EPO-alpha and EPO-beta. There is a suggestion that American scientists have now developed a technique to introduce an EPO gene by genetic manipulation - it would boost natural production yet be completely undetectable. There is still no test to determine use of human growth hormone (HGH).

But punishing drug cheats, especially where millions of dollars of winnings and sponsorship earnings are at stake, also runs into issues of "restraint of trade" action from the banned individuals. It's clear some national athletics organisations have run scared of court action that could bankrupt them. And anyway, winners inspire others, don't they?

Certainly Nike, adidas and Reebok seem not the least interested in matching the multi-millions they pour into winners with funding of drug-testing that would prove some of them cheated.

And nationalism is still a driving sporting force.

The Russians were facing discrimination in the US, said chef de mission Mamatov, citing political motivation for the positive tests returned by his countrywomen. "Lazutina is a true Olympic champion and she will get a true champion's welcome when the team arrives in Moscow."

Perhaps her medical adviser merits one, too.