Myers Disqualified From U.S. Swim Team : U.S. Olympic Committee Upholds Finding on Her Positive Drug Test

Angel Myers was disqualified from the U.S. Olympic swim team Sunday, when she lost an appeal after earlier testing positive for a steroid at the U.S. Swimming Long Course National Championships at Austin, Tex., the meet that also served as the Olympic qualifying meet.

The U.S. Olympic Committee Board of Review, meeting in Colorado Springs, Colo., Saturday and Sunday, stood by its finding of a week ago Sunday when it told Myers she had tested positive for a drug.

Myers, whose two urine samples both tested positive according to a swim official, had lodged an appeal last Thursday.

In a statement released Sunday, Myers denied that she used steroids and said she will seek avenues to challenge the disqualification.

She had originally qualified to swim the 50-meter freestyle, 100-meter freestyle, 100-meter butterfly and the 400-meter freestyle relay, and she also had a chance to make the 400-meter medley relay team. Sunday, she returned to her home in Americus, Ga.

Replacing Myers in the 50 freestyle and also swimming in the qualifying heat of the 400 freestyle relay will be Jill Sterkel of Austin, Tex., who becomes the first U.S. woman swimmer to make four Olympic teams.

Also added to the U.S. team is Janel Jorgenson of Ridgefield, Conn., who will replace Myers in the 100 butterfly.

Dara Torres of Beverly Hills, who made the team as a member of the 400 freestyle relay with a third-place finish in the women’s 100 freestyle, will move up to second place and will also swim the 100 in individual competition.

Torres has been reinstated as the U.S. record-holder in the 100 because all of Myers’ swims at the Austin meet, which began three weeks ago, have been disqualified.

Although the USOC did not identify the banned substance, Myers’ family issued a statement saying that Myers was informed by the USOC that she was “decertified from the team due to the fact that her urine sample tested positive for a steroid.”

The statement, which was read to reporters calling the Myers’ home, continued: “Angel and her representatives are exploring every avenue of appeal that is available to her because we feel that the test results are erroneous.”

Myers, the statement said, was taking a legal prescription for ortho-novum (a birth-control pill), which “has almost identical characteristics to the steroid the USOC claims she was testing positive for.”

In conclusion, the statement said: “Angel denies that she was taking this banned steroid or any other banned substance.”

Mike Moran, a spokesman for the USOC, said: “We stand by the integrity and validity of our test. . . . We have tested over 10,000 people since 1984. We have tested thousands of women, a significant number of them on birth control, and we have not had this problem before. . . . I’m sure that Dr. (Don) Catlin and his staff were aware of the claims that Angel and her father were making.”

Catlin runs the drug testing lab at UCLA, where the USOC tests are conducted.

Myers, a 21-year-old student at Furman who competed well in both the Goodwill Games in 1986 and in the Pan Pacific Games in 1987, still surprised the competition, when she won three events, setting U.S. records in two of them, at Austin.

She set U.S. records in winning both the 50 freestyle and the 100 freestyle. She also won the 100 butterfly, beating Mary T. Meagher, the world record-holder in the event, who finished second.

Myers told reporters in Austin that her times dropped significantly over her times of 1987 because she has been doing so much strength training with free weights.

In preparing for the possible exclusion of Myers, Sterkel and Jorgenson have been working out with the team in Los Angeles. Both Sterkel and Jorgenson flew to Los Angeles knowing that they might have to go home again if Myers won her appeal.

Sterkel, 27, was bitterly disappointed when she failed to make the Olympic team in front of her hometown supporters in Austin.

Sterkel, who swam for the University of Texas, was serving under U.S. Coach Richard Quick as an assistant coach with the Longhorns. She came back from knee surgery to swim faster at the qualifying meet than she had in 1984, and yet she just missed making the team.

“When Richard told me Thursday that I should come out here to train, just to be ready, I told him, ‘Don’t expect me to be too excited.’ I’ve been on such an emotional roller-coaster the last couple of weeks I didn’t want to get my hopes of too much just to get slammed down again,” Sterkel said. “I came in here thinking that I was here as a substitute, ready to go if I was called on.

“Now that it’s been decided, I am excited. I’m really happy to be on the team. I don’t feel like I backed in, because part of making the team should be meeting all the requirements. . . . I do feel bad for Angel, though, because I don’t think she realized she had that substance in her body. She has to be really disappointed. She’s an excellent swimmer that the team lost. I hope that (Janel and I) can hold the line and do well for the team.”

Sterkel, who swam as an alternate on the relay team in 1984, won her first Olympic gold medal when she was 16, swimming on the 400-meter freestyle relay team that won the only gold medal U.S. women won in 1976.

Quick released a statement Sunday afternoon that said: “It is a shame that this has happened to our sport and to Olympic sports, but it speaks well for the necessity and integrity of substance testing. Every consideration was given to Angel during this process.”

Moran said that Myers was not the first swimmer to test positive for a banned substance since the USOC began the testing in 1984, but she was the first to be disqualified at this level. He said that two athletes who made Olympic teams in other sports in 1984 and subsequently tested positive for banned substances were disqualified from their teams, but the governing bodies of their sports made no announcement. No one noticed when those athletes did not compete.

The absence of Angel Myers and the presence of Jill Sterkel would have been noticed in Seoul.