The Pain Lingers for David Kiley : Paralympics: Like many disabled persons, the wheelchair basketball player occasionally needs medication. This year, it cost the U.S. a gold medal.

Athletes and officials in the world of disabled sports have long campaigned for more respect and recognition. They point out that disabled athletes work as hard, devote as many hours to training and are in most ways the equal of their able-bodied counterparts.

Events at this summer’s Paralympic Games at Barcelona confirmed what officials have been saying. For the first time, disabled athletes tested positive for banned drugs at their most prestigious competition. The drug scandal offers proof that--just like able-bodied athletes--some disabled athletes are willing to cheat to win.

In the first full-scale testing conducted at a Paralympic Games, one athlete was disqualified after being found positive for anabolic steroids and another tested positive, though his gold medal was reinstated. In the strangest case, David Kiley of San Dimas took a painkiller that contained banned substances, and the entire U.S. men’s wheelchair basketball team lost its gold medal.

Even before the Games, three Canadian weightlifters were found to be drug-positive at a national training camp and were not sent to Barcelona.

These cases illustrate the double-edged sword of drug testing: catching athletes who take performance-enchancing drugs, such as steroids or amphetamines, and penalizing unsuspecting athletes who take cold preparations, asthma medications and mild painkillers.

These are the problems that the able-bodied athletic world has been struggling with since drug testing was introduced at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. Now the perplexing questions of drugs and the proper penalty for their improper use have been inherited by the community of disabled sports. The events in Barcelona also have raised the question of the appropriateness of not allowing painkillers and muscle relaxants among disabled athletes--medications many disabled persons require on a daily basis. Both types of drugs are on the International Olympic Committee’s banned list.

As a result of the controversy, many of the sport’s administrators wish they had never heard of drug testing.

“In retrospect, we should have paid more attention to the whole question of drug testing, especially the pitfalls,” said Paul DePace, chairman of the National Wheelchair Athletic Assn. and head of the U.S. delegation in Barcelona.

The case of David Kiley best illustrates the pitfalls.

Kiley, 39, is recognized as the finest wheelchair basketball player in the world. A star high school athlete, Kiley damaged his spinal cord in 1973 when he slid down a snowy slope in an inner tube and slammed, back-first, into a tree. The accident left Kiley partially paralyzed from the waist down.

Barcelona was his fifth Paralympics, and he has been a 14-time All-American in wheelchair basketball.

The Barcelona Games were to have been Kiley’s last. His hope was to help the United States to its second consecutive gold medal, then retire. As so often happens, dreams collided with reality. Rather than being at the peak of his performance, Kiley felt awful. Because his spinal cord is only partially severed, he still feels pain in his back and legs. These jolts almost resemble electrical shocks, and he experiences them every day of his life.

Kiley, like many disabled persons, has mastered techniques to control the pain. But what he felt in September was a different kind of pain. It was sharp, intense and excruciating.

“What happens is the damaged nerves get set off,” he said. “Two or three times a year I deal with this. It’s tremendous leg pain. It builds and builds. Nothing stops it.”

Such an attack at the Paralympics in 1980 caused Kiley to be hospitalized. In Barcelona, Kiley’s coach found him in great pain in his room one day. The coach offered him darvocet, a mild painkiller the coach was taking for back pain. Because he had a game the next day, Kiley refused.

Two days before the United States played in the gold-medal game, Kiley awakened at 2:30 a.m. with intense pain in his legs.

“I lay there, trying to make the pain go away, but it wasn’t happening,” Kiley said. “Then I did what I’ve done 100 times before in a similar situation--I took medication.”

He remembered the darvocet pill his coach had left, and took it.

“I thought, ‘OK, we have a day off tomorrow, I’ll be fine.’ From an athletic standpoint (as far as the medication impairing his ability to play), I’ll be OK. I took it. I’m ultimately responsible.”

What happened next may bring about profound change in disabled sports. Two days later, the United States beat the Netherlands to win the gold medal. Moments after the game, Kiley was selected for random testing. Two days after that, he tested positive for a banned substance.

The testing for the Paralympics was carried out at the same laboratory as the just-completed 25th Olympic Games and followed the same protocol and banned list directed by the IOC. Few in disabled sports are saying drug testing should not have been instituted. In fact, some estimate as many as one-fourth of disabled athletes use performance-enhancing drugs. “There is a drug problem of the same kind as in other sports,” said one official, who asked not to be named. “Steroid use was rampant in racing and the strength sports.”

Of the 3,600 athletes at the Paralympics, 225 were tested. Kiley was found to have traces of the painkiller darvon in his system. Darvon, a narcotic, is considered to be a mild painkiller, about two-thirds the strength of codeine.

Even though darvon is not a performance-enhancing drug, and even though its analgesic effects last only six hours, a small amount was still in Kiley’s system and he was counted as an official positive.

The U.S. team was stripped of its gold medal, and Kiley faces a possible two-year suspension. The National Wheelchair Athletic Assn. filed an appeal on behalf of the team but soon discovered an oversight by the International Coordination Committee of World Sports Organizations for the Disabled, which organized the Paralympics. The ICC instituted testing, but made no provisions for appealing decisions. An appeals process is an accepted procedure in international sport. The Paralympics are distinct from the Special Olympics, which emphasize participation as opposed to competition. The Paralympics include athletes who compete on a world-class level.

Last week, the ICC agreed to recommend that Kiley be granted a hearing, scheduled for April. U.S. officials are hopeful that a precedent can be set, particularly in the area of due process.

Stan Labanowich, commissioner of the National Wheelchair Basketball Assn. and a member of the ICC’s executive committee, presented the 55-page appeal last week in Milan, Italy.

“We believe that David’s due process rights were not allowed,” Labanowich said. “He’s never had a chance to tell his side. His case has caused me to examine the whole area of drug testing. If the decision (in April) goes against us, we’ll keep fighting. We’ll change the rules and down the line get our medal back.”

The case mirrors a situation that happened in track and field two years ago. During the indoor track season there was a sudden spate of drug positives, most for the stimulant ephedrine. Officials were puzzled. Ephedrine was not thought to be a commonly used drug among athletes. Eventually it was discovered that many of the athletes who tested positive had taken over-the-counter cold preparations that contained ephedrine.

What to do about so-called inadvertent use of banned substances? Sports officials say it is the responsibility of the athletes to educate themselves, in conjunction with their doctors. Athletes complain that they are asked to be pharmacists and can’t keep up with the ever-expanding banned list.

After floods of complaints and questions, the U.S. Olympic Committee established a 24-hour drug hotline that athletes can call and ask in confidence if a drug or medication they are taking contains banned substances.

In the case of disabled athletes, drug education is still evolving.

“It was totally ludicrous as to the lack of emphasis,” Kiley said of the U.S. Paralympic team’s education about drugs. “You were sent a drug handbook. That was it. That was as much a drug emphasis as you got.”

Kiley said that, like many athletes, he thought of banned drugs as meaning anabolic steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs. He said he did not think about other families of drugs as being banned.

But, according to Michael Ferrera, director of medical services for the U.S. Paralympic team, the athletes were sent literature, given lectures and even shown a film about drug testing. However, the drug film was shown on the team charter to Barcelona. The wheelchair basketball team was not on the plane.

Kiley says he understands that he is responsible for taking the painkiller, no matter how innocent the circumstances. But he is upset that the entire basketball team has to pay for his oversight.

“I made a big mistake in not realizing what was on the banned list,” Kiley said. “They left a big hole and I stepped into it. I’ll take responsibility for that. But why punish my teammates for something I did? It doesn’t make any sense to me. If I could take that back, I would. The whole thing is crazy, though. I took a painkiller 48 hours before a competition. It’s therapeutic value lasted about six hours. It was not a performance- enhancing drug. It did not affect the outcome of the game. They are going to have to rethink this. Why deprive disabled athletes of drugs they need, especially if they don’t affect performance?”

His questions may be answered in April--but they also may not. Labanowich of the National Wheelchair Basketball Assn. gives the appeal only a 50-50 chance of success. In the meantime, Kiley reports to his job as director of wheelchair sports and recreation at Casa Colina in Pomona. He said this week that if the team does not get the gold medal back, he will go back into training and compete in the 1996 Paralympics at Atlanta.

Kiley is more angry than bitter and realizes his situation has occurred dozens of times to able-bodied athletes. To him, that’s the frustrating part.

“They (officials) want us to be seen as being on a par with able-bodied athletes. That’s why the drug testing was started,” he said. “Now, I guess we are the same as them. We’ve sure got the same problems.”