THE 1978 PAN AMERICAN GAMES : Testing for Drugs Causes Stir : Procedures Confuse Pan Am Officials

The dark cloud of drug testing that hung over the previous Pan American Games blew in over Indianapolis Tuesday.

In the 1983 Pan Am Games in Caracas, 30 athletes tested positive for drugs banned by the International Olympic Committee.

Of those 30, 16 were medal winners.

Dozens of other athletes, many of them from the United States, left Caracas without competing, citing personal reasons. The assumption was that they didn’t want to get caught with drugs in their systems and risk long suspensions from international competition.

So drugs left a mark on Caracas and the Pan Am Games. After that, the assumption was that, if nothing else, drug testing would be one area certain to be cleaned up for the Indianapolis Games by the Pan American Sports Organization (PASO).

But Tuesday, the acting head of the PASO medical commission, Dr. Eduardo Henrique DeRose of Brazil, stirred up the issue again with controversial, confusing and even apparently inaccurate statements.

Before the day was over, other officials had criticized PASO for its ineffectiveness in handling complex matters such as drug testing, and the president of PASO, Mario Vazquez Rana of Mexico, had contradicted earlier statements by his own medical chief, DeRose.

But perhaps the most stunning indictment of the PASO drug-testing system was the story told by a Pan Am Games official.

“When the medalists in the men’s and women’s marathon were brought into the press tent Sunday, the PASO doping people came in, too,” said the official, who asked not to be identified.

“In track and field here, they are testing the first two places and one other competitor at random. And they were looking for their people to take the doping.

“Well, one of the press officers, after telling them (the dope-testing officials) they could let the athletes talk to the press before taking them to the doping area, asked them what place finisher they had selected for their random test in each marathon.

“They said they didn’t know. Nobody had decided that. So the press officer just went and got both bronze medalists and, essentially, just said, ‘Hey, here are your random test people.’

“So, in the marathons, you had a press guy deciding for PASO who to test. Now isn’t that just wonderful?”

That story came to light just a few hours after DeRose had spoken at a press conference apparently called to soft-pedal other reported incidents from the opening day of track and field.

One report said that no escorts had been provided for athletes going to the doping area. Escorts are specified in the rules. Also, unattended bottles of water that could be tampered with were served in the doping area. Athletes, often dehydrated after competing, can drink from the bottles before submitting to their tests.

The Indianapolis Star reported that one testing area had a toilet that didn’t work. In another incident, athletes wanting cold liquids after competing had to wait until volunteers made a run to a nearby store.

The Star also quoted DeRose, pinning part of the blame on the local Indianapolis organizers, as saying that not enough local doctors were provided to man the venues, so he had gone out on his own and recruited 15 doctors from South America to help him.

At the press conference, the controversy began when DeRose said that all medalists would not be tested, that PASO operates differently than the International Olympic Committee in that it allows individual sports federations to dictate testing procedures.

Dr. Robert Voy, the chief medical officer for the United States Olympic Committee, said later: “I’m very surprised they’re not testing the medalists. I thought the program of testing was to fight this on an international level. And what better stage than the Pan Am Games?”

DeRose, under questioning about the problems at track and field Sunday, then said that any positive tests that came up Sunday would be tossed out because of the questionable testing conditions. That meant that track and field medalists from Sunday’s competition here wouldn’t be stripped of medals or places if they tested positive.

One response to that came from Don Catlin, head of the UCLA lab that did the testing for Dr. Tony Daly, L.A. Olympic Committee medical chief, in the ’84 Olympics. Catlin, when reached in Los Angeles, said, “What?!”

Also in the course of the press conference, DeRose cited swimming as one example of a sport here whose federation had ruled that, instead of any medalists being specifically tested, the testing would be done at random.

Questioned about that, Javier Ostor Mura of Mexico, past president of FINA, the international swimming federation, said that DeRose was wrong.

“Finishers 1, 2 and 3 are being tested here,” Mura said.

With Mura when he was questioned was Robert Helmick, the president of both the USOC and FINA.

Helmick said: “The difference in these things from the Olympics is that PASO doesn’t have as strong a medical commission as the IOC.”

Another Olympic official, who asked for anonymity, referred to the PASO’s medical commission as “Basically, Mario Vazquez Rana’s desk.”

Rana added further confusion to the long day of intrigue when he was questioned later about DeRose’s statements.

“We are following the IOC rules on drug testing,” he said. “Tests are being made on all medals, plus two or three at random.”

When pressed on why his medical chief, DeRose, had said the opposite, Rana patted a reporter on the shoulder and said: “He said that? I guess I will have to have a meeting with him.”

DeRose was also pressed by reporters when he said that PASO had asked to test medalists in the sport of shooting, but that the shooting federation had demanded random testing only.

Shooting is a key drug-testing sport because the performance of shooters can be enhanced greatly by beta blockers, banned drugs that calm competitors’ nerves. “We tested shooters at the ’84 Games,” said Daly, when contacted in Los Angeles. “In fact, because of the way the sport is, I’m sure we tested all of them, not just medalists.”

In the midst of all the confusion, DeRose also said that he had handled drug testing just as it is being handled here in the other Pan Am Games that he has worked--San Juan in ’79 and Caracas in ’83.

Not so, a number of officials said. Because Caracas officials could neither afford it financially nor deal with its complexities, the IOC was called in 10 days before the competition, they said.

That’s why there was such an uproar in Caracas, they added. The IOC ran it so tightly, under IOC rules, with medalists and additional random testing being done, that many athletes got caught.

DeRose also said that random testing was the wave of the future, because it deterred athletes who were just shooting for fourth place. Any other official asked about that deemed the statement silly.

Catlin said that the reason for testing medalists, as the IOC has dictated and PASO has apparently refused to accept across the board--depending upon which PASO official you believe--is so obvious it’s almost silly.

“We want to know that our winners are clean,” he said.