Barnes Tested Positive for Drugs, Paper Says

Randy Barnes, who set the world record in the shotput at UCLA in May, tested positive for drugs at a meet in Sweden last month, a French newspaper reported Monday.

L’Equipe, a nationally circulated sports daily, said that Barnes tested positive at the meet at Malmo Aug. 7. He won the event there with a put of 74 feet 11 1/4 inches, 11 inches short of the record of 75-10 1/4 he set May 20 in the Jack-in-the-Box Invitational at UCLA.

The newspaper gave no attribution for the story and did not identify the drug Barnes was alleged to have taken.

Barnes, reached Monday at his home in South Charleston, W. Va., said he had not been notified of a positive test and had not heard of the report, but called it “fishy.”

A spokesman for The Athletics Congress, the national governing body for the sport, said TAC had no comment on the report.

According to L’Equipe, the first portion of the sample was analyzed at a laboratory in Stockholm. Because the first sample was positive, a second sample was tested, the results of which will be known within 15 days, the paper said.

If the second test is positive, Barnes, 24, could be suspended for two years. That would make him ineligible for the 1991 world indoor and outdoor track and field championships, and jeopardize his chances for the 1992 Olympics.

“This doesn’t sound right to me at all,” Barnes said. “What about due process? Aren’t I supposed to be present when the B (second) sample is tested?”

International rules require that when an athlete’s first sample tests positive, the athlete and his federation are notified, and the athlete or his representative must be allowed to be present when the second sample is tested.

Barnes said that there has been increased scrutiny--and more persistent gossip about him--since he set the world record. (Barnes was tested at the UCLA meet and passed.)

“I’m not surprised to hear this,” he said. “I’ve heard rumors like this before, but it has never led to anything. But it can do damage.”