Olympian Jenkins Gets 7 Years in Steroid Case

David A. Jenkins, Olympic medalist and one-time golden boy of British track-and-field, was sentenced to seven years in jail Monday for conspiring to produce steroids in Tijuana, smuggle them across the border and distribute the drugs in the United States under fake labels.

Jenkins, who had been free on bail, asked for a monthlong reprieve to attend to business matters at his vitamin-packaging concern in Oceanside. But U.S. District Judge Lawrence J. Irving ordered him jailed immediately.

Jenkins, a resident of Del Mar, also was fined $75,000.

“I’d like to apologize to the court and the government,” Jenkins told the judge in a brief statement before the sentence was imposed. “The enterprise ran out of my control and was misguided and foolish.”

Federal authorities applauded the prison sentence, which matched their request and was characterized as one of the stiffest to date in the growing number of cases involving illicit steroids--synthetic hormones that promote muscle strength and mass, but whose side effects after prolonged use can range from stunted growth in youngsters to liver cancer. The drugs, legally available in the United States only by prescription, are widely abused by body-builders, weight lifters and professional, amateur and weekend athletes.

The Jenkins’ ring was described by officials as one of the nation’s foremost black market producers and distributors and a progenitor of numerous “copycat” operations.

“I think what the Jenkins’ sentencing will do is continue to educate the public about the dangers of steroid use,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Phillip L. B. Halpern, who prosecuted the case and who has emerged as one of the nation’s leading authorities on the $100-million-a-year steroid black market.

Jenkins, who entered a guilty plea on four counts of conspiracy and steroid-trafficking counts in November, 1987, faced a maximum 16-year prison sentence and a fine of up to $1 million.

Jenkins was a member of Britain’s silver medal-winning 1,600-meter relay team at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and also participated in the 1976 Games. He was also a longtime steroid user, although he has said he would never use the substances again.

In his zeal to make a “quick buck,” the judge said, Jenkins ignored the dangers faced by the many athletes who used the drugs produced by the ring.

His sentencing comes almost exactly three years after a regulatory action in the United States that prosecutors said was the genesis of the drug ring. In December, 1985, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration withdrew the popular steroid methandrostenolone--known by its trade name as Dianabol, or “D-ball” in gym parlance--from legal sale in the United States.

Jenkins told The Times in an interview six weeks ago that he and a co-conspirator, Daniel Duchaine, author of an underground steroid handbook, came up with the idea of finding a Mexican source to manufacture Dianabol.

The source, prosecutors alleged, turned out to be a Tijuana laboratory, Laboratorios Milanos de Mexico, owned by Juan Javier Macklis, who allegedly arranged for huge quantities of the drugs to be smuggled into the United States. The defendants eventually bottled copies of Dianabol and a wide range of other steroids and pasted phony labels on the bottles, making the substances appear to be the product of legitimate U.S. and European manufacturers, including Ceiba Geigy, Syntex and Schering, prosecutors alleged.

The operation began in earnest in February, 1986, and soon was netting six-figure profits for its participants, including Jenkins.

Jenkins was one of 36 defendants named in a 110-count federal grand jury indictment in May, 1987. About two dozen defendants have entered guilty pleas, including Jenkins, Duchaine and Patrick Jacobs, a one-time associate strength coach at the University of Miami, but Jenkins’ sentence is the most severe to date. Three other cases are still pending.