Nandrolone Could Make Biggest Mark at Sydney

The guns of nandrolone remain poised at the head of the Sydney Olympics, threatening to clear out more space in the athletes’ village than a drunken American ice hockey player.

Nandrolone, the hot banned steroid of the moment, has terrorized the world of international track and field and frightened FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, to the point of commissioning an expensive and elaborate field study out of fear of mass suspensions come September.

So far this year, nandrolone is on pace to reduce Britain’s once-promising track squad to a one-man relay team by the time the Sydney Games open. Mark Richardson, a silver medalist on Britain’s 1,600-meter team at the 1996 Olympics, recently became the fourth British athlete in the last 12 months to test positive for the substance, joining European 200-meter champion Doug Walker, 400-meter hurdler Gary Cadogan and former world and Olympic 100-meter champion Linford Christie.

Add former world women’s 200-meter titlist Merlene Ottey of Jamaica and former 5,000-meter Olympic champion Dieter Baumann of Germany to the suspended list, and the Nandrolone All-Stars have a roster capable of giving the United States a run in the Sydney medal standings. The six names make up only the tip of the nandrolone epidemic. In 1999 alone, 343 positive tests for nandrolone in all sports around the world were reported, which raises the question:

Are the athletes now officially out of control . . . or is something fishy afloat?

Richardson called his positive test “a farce” and offered to submit to a lie detector to prove his innocence.

Baumann, claiming an outside party maliciously injected nandrolone into his toothpaste, has filed a lawsuit.

UK Athletics cleared Cadogan, Christie and Walker after determining that “it could not be proven beyond reasonable doubt that the substance present in the sample was derived from a prohibitive substance”--although the international track federation, IAAF, rejected that ruling and still considers the three athletes suspended until a hearing next month.

The athletes, and their lawyers, have launched a counterattack, arguing that the IOC’s legal limit of two nanograms of nandrolone, a naturally produced steroid, is too low.

FIFA went one step farther, testing 356 professional soccer players as part of a study that yielded a problematic result: These athletes, when under high stress, were capable of producing nandrolone levels above the IOC’s allowed limit.

FIFA argued that, theoretically, “clean” soccer players could still test positive according to such guidelines during the Sydney Games. FIFA officials pushed for a higher legal limit, but the IOC and the World Anti-Doping Agency have dismissed the study, leaving the current two-nanogram threshold in place.

“From what I understand, the medical data shows the only way you can go above the two-nanogram level is by ingesting the drug,” said Dick Pound, IOC vice president and WADA chairman.

“You can eat boar’s testicles all week and not reach that level.”

Dr. Patrick Schamasch, director of the IOC medical commission, said an IOC study of 621 athletes during the 1998 Nagano Olympics “in real competition, not simulated,” produced “only five above our limits--all women.” All others were below. “From our study in Nagano, we are comfortable with the two-nanogram cutoff level.”

Reluctantly, FIFA has agreed to accept that level for the upcoming Olympics.

“The presence of more than two nanograms is considered doping by IOC and FIFA,” said Michel D’Hooghe, head of the FIFA medical commission. “But there is a small gray zone.

“On the one hand, we have a rule that says more than two nanograms is considered positive, but on the other hand, we have some exceptional results where there are 2.1 or 2.2 and it is here where we must be careful. . . . When we find a result just above two nanograms, let’s control it again and do more tests and look closer.

“The situation with two nanograms is not the same as the man who tests positive for 10, 20, 30 or even more nanograms.”

The nandrolone controversy is expected to worsen before it lessens. WADA has announced that beginning in April, the agency, along with national and international federations, will conduct more than 5,000 random out-of-competition tests--meaning roughly half of the 10,000 athletes expected to participate in the Sydney Games will be tested.

THERE HE GOES AGAIN

The athletes have an unlikely ally in the skirmish over nandrolone: IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch.

In 1998, Samaranch gave a controversial interview to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo in which he painted himself as an out-of-touch dove in the war on drugs in sports, maintaining that drugs should only be banned if they were harmful to an athlete’s health.

Any performance enhancer that could be ingested safely, regardless of how it might undermine the record book and ridiculously skew the playing field in favor of the athletes rich enough to afford the drug, was fine by Samaranch.

Admitting he “created a storm” with those comments, Samaranch recently sat down again with the newspaper to amend, ever slightly, his position on the topic.

“Maybe now I have to be more cautious,” he said. “But I believe the principal task of the fight against drugs is to preserve the health of the athletes.

“The second part is that all sports people should be in equal conditions at the moment of competition. . . . I said [in the previous interview] and I’ll repeat it now: The guilty party is always the athlete, in whose body the drug is found. However, all those surrounding the athlete and who incite him or her to take drugs escape without sanction.”

Samaranch also said he doubted the reliability of blood tests as a means to better detect doping in athletes.

“I don’t know all the details . . . but the experts at the moment say that [blood tests] are no use at all,” he said. “It’s fashionable to say that a blood test can detect everything, but that’s not the case. If it was true we would have done it.

“Blood testing is not the solution, and I believe researchers are now looking for a totally new system because a urine test can only show you so much.”

PERFECT SKIN?

What clapskates were to the 1998 Winter Olympics, the “Fastskin” body swimsuit figures to be to the Sydney Games--only much quieter.

The new neck-to-ankle suit, said to reduce a swimmer’s glide time by 7.5%, was worn in competition for the first time Saturday by world champion Grant Hackett of Australia, who won a low-key 400-meter race at Gold Coast, Australia.

The Australian Olympic Committee has requested a hearing in the international Court of Arbitration for Sports before the Australian Olympic swim trials in May. FINA, the world governing body of swimming, has already sanctioned the suits, but the AOC wants to ensure that swimmers wearing the suits will not be legally challenged by swimmers unable to wear the suits because of sponsorship deals.

Speedo International developed the “Fastskin” and according to the company’s president, Joe Fields, the suit fully complies with FINA regulations, which prohibit any device that aids a swimmer’s speed, buoyancy or endurance during competition.

“Ninety-nine percent me, 1% suit,” Hackett said after Saturday’s meet, in which he was the only swimmer wearing a bodysuit. “The suit doesn’t make you train harder or lift more weights.”

TRIVIAL PURSUIT

Now that graft is frowned upon, IOC executive Marc Hodler is hoping the Salt Lake City Olympic program will at least accommodate him his favorite hobby-- bridge.

Yes, Hodler, president of the Swiss Bridge Federation for 30 years, is lobbying for the card game to be featured as a demonstration sport in the 2002 Winter Olympics.

“I’m a believer that the human brain is at least as important as muscles,” Hodler says.

Arguing along similar lines, proponents of chess have also petitioned that their pastime be granted Olympic status.

And after that?

Crossword puzzles? “Jeopardy”? (“I’ll take ‘Olympic Bribery Scandals’ for $400, Alex.”) “Who Wants to Be an Olympic Gold Medalist?” (IOC guidelines to prohibit the usage of more than three lifelines.)

And what will these events do to the menu in the athletes village?

Grilled fish, also known as “brain food” . . . dinner entree, or banned performance-enhancing substance?