WORLD SPORTS SCENE / RANDY HARVEY : USOC Appears to Be Winning Drug War

Almost 10 years after they declared war on performance-enhancing drugs, anabolic steroids in particular, U.S. Olympic Committee officials finally are able to say they are winning.

After reviewing drug-testing results from the U.S. trials in all 29 sports that will be represented in the Summer Olympics at Barcelona, the USOC’s executive director, Harvey Schiller, said last week: “We found very, very few positives. In terms of high-profile athletes, I don’t know any.”

Schiller said that the number of athletes who will lose berths on the team, after all appeals are exhausted, might be as few as four or five. Because of confidentiality rules, he would not name them or their sports. The number does not include discus thrower Kamy Keshmiri of Reno, Nev., who said Friday that he was informed that he tested positive for an unspecified drug before the track and field trials.

“I’m feeling comfortable that use in general in most sports is down,” said Dr. Don Catlin, the director of the UCLA laboratory where USOC testing has been conducted since 1983.

Almost obsolete, he said, is Ben Johnson’s former steroid of choice, stanozolol.

“That probably got a bad name because Ben got caught,” Catlin said.

But he added that there is still a “hard core” that persists in testing the tests.

Most recently, he said, drug users have attempted to subvert the test for the male hormone testosterone by ingesting epitestosterone. In most males, the balance of testosterone to epitestosterone is one to one. But because some males have a naturally elevated level, the International Olympic Committee has the discretion to suspend athletes only if their tests reveal a balance of higher than six to one.

“We’re finding that some athletes are taking testosterone right up to the wire, then trying to neutralize the high level by taking epitestosterone,” Catlin said. “In the last two or three years, we’ve seen between 10 and 20 cases each year.”

Earlier this year, however, he voiced his concerns to the IOC, which ruled that athletes now are subject to suspension if abnormally high levels of epitestosterone are discovered in their systems.

The IOC also placed an asthma medication, clembuterol, on the banned list when tests revealed that it was becoming increasingly popular with athletes, probably because it acts as both a stimulant and an anabolic agent. “It was a doper’s delight,” Catlin said.

Most of the focus in the media’s reporting on this subject has been on the drug users, but in another example of the need for increased scrutiny of the drug testers, U.S. cyclist Jim Pollak has been exonerated after being falsely accused of having an unacceptable level of testosterone in his system.

Pollak, a member of the U.S. 4,000-meter pursuit team from Denver, was suspended for two years by the U.S. Cycling Federation after reportedly failing a drug test in April after a race in Belgium.

He won his appeal last week, when the USCF dimissed the case. Not only was the Cologne, Germany, laboratory where the test was conducted unable to produce evidence that he tested positive, Belgian officials who administered the test said that his testosterone level was not over the acceptable limit.

“My reputation has been tarnished,” Pollak said. “Something has to be done. I was exonerated, but (athletes’) rights are limited.”

USOC officials expect that a second U.S. member of the IOC will be named within the next 10 days. They speculate that it will be either USOC President Bill Hybl of Colorado Springs, Colo., or Bob Smith of Greenville, Ill., president of the International Baseball Federation.

But IOC member Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles said last week that the committee might postpone its decision until next year.

She said that the IOC has been so involved in other issues, such as the participation of Yugoslav and South African athletes, in the upcoming Summer Olympics that it has not been able to devote the attention required to the election of a new member.

While Hybl supporters have been trumpeting his role in the U.S. government’s decision to back the proposal that enables Yugoslav athletes to participate at Barcelona under a neutral flag, DeFrantz revealed that another key player was Arnold Schwarzenegger.

DeFrantz said she asked the actor to become involved because he, as chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness, has direct access to the oval office. Schwarzenegger will head the U.S. government’s delegation to the closing ceremony at Barcelona.

Bora Milutinovic, a Serbian who coaches the U.S. national soccer team, denies a report in the Swedish press that he will quit his job in protest of the U.S. government-supported sanctions against Yugoslavia, which now consists of only two republics, Serbia and Montenegro.

“I am only a coach, not a politician,” he said from his Laguna Niguel home.

When Karin Smith, 36, withdrew from the Olympic trials in the first round of the javelin throw because of a shoulder injury, she said that we might see her again four years from now in the Summer Games at Atlanta.

We might, however, see the former UCLA thrower even sooner. She has been named to the team that will compete at Barcelona because she is one of only three women in the United States who has met the international qualifying standard.

If she accepts the berth, she will be the track and field team’s only five-time Olympian.