GOODWILL GAMES : Four Positive Drug Tests Found

Four of 493 drug tests at the Goodwill Games were positive, two for over-the-counter drugs and two for unspecified substances, officials said Sunday.

Of the 587 tests scheduled to be conducted, 493 from 18 sports had been analyzed through Saturday, said Baaron Pittenger, co-chairman of the Soviet-American Joint Commission Against Doping in Sport. But Pittenger declined to elaborate.

“We told the national governing bodies that there would be no announcement on results,” Pittenger said. “But we felt the aggregate results were so pleasing that we made this announcement.”

The drug testing was conducted by the U.S. Olympic Committee after Turner Broadcasting, which sponsored the games, refused to handle the procedures. It cost the USOC about $200,000.

“From my experience,” said Don Catlin, head of the IOC-accredited laboratory at UCLA, which analyzed the tests, “the lab results show a significant decline in the use of various banned drugs from what we have seen previously.”