Drugs Still a Concern to Some

A year after six Finnish cross-country skiers failed drug tests at the World Championships and turned the sport upside down, doping remains all too common, according to U.S. Olympians Justin Wadsworth and Nina Kemppel.

“If you take the results page and look at the top 30 ... up to 40% of the top 30 could possibly be dopers,” said Wadsworth, who will compete at his third Games next month at Salt Lake City.

“I try not to think about it too much because it’s extremely frustrating to the point where if you think about it at a World Cup or the Olympics, it almost makes me sick, because it’s so prevalent.”

Kemppel, a four-time Olympian, said Wednesday that testing and sanctions have made few inroads against the problem and urged stiffer penalties for athletes who test positive for banned drugs. The Finns used HES, a plasma expander that increases the levels of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, and athletes in other endurance sports have toyed with EPO, a performance-enhancing drug.

The Baltic News Service reported Wednesday that Estonian cross-country skier Kristina Smigun, a potential medalist, tested positive for a banned substance. Tests will be performed on a second sample to confirm the results.

The Finns retired or were banned from competition. But Russia’s Lyubov Egorova, a six-time Olympic cross-country skiing gold medalist, has resumed competing after a two-year ban for taking Bromantan, which enhances performance and can mask other drugs.

“I believe they’re making a little bit of progress,” Kemppel said of efforts by the World Anti-Doping Agency to root out drugs. “I think they have to focus on better tests and tougher suspensions.

“Egorova was thrown out in ‘99, and now she’s back on the Russian team. She was caught cheating at the World Championships and she should have had a lifetime ban.... I don’t speak very good Russian so I can’t talk to her, but it makes me very angry when I’m standing on the starting line and I see her right behind me. I don’t want to be standing on the starting line with a drug cheat. You want to know all your competitors are on an even field when the gun goes off.”

Wadsworth was among the skiers who circulated a petition asking the International Ski Federation to allow WADA to conduct drug tests.

WADA has since assumed that job--and it has expanded the scope of its authority to include NHL players, who were not tested before the 1998 Nagano Games. However, as testing gets more sophisticated, so do cheaters.

To Kemppel, there’s only one answer.

“Italy has made it illegal to dope. If you get caught doping, you go to jail. Those are the kinds of things we need,” she said.

Take a Flying Leap

Only one U.S. athlete has won a ski jumping medal--and that came 50 years after the event, when a historian found an error had been made in calculating scores at the 1924 Chamonix Games and Anders Haugen was moved up to third.

That drought probably won’t end at Salt Lake City. However, 21-year-old Alan Alborn and 17-year-old Clint Jones have had respectable results this season, providing hope they can eventually break the European and Japanese dominance of the event.

Alborn, of Anchorage, Alaska, credits the U.S. training program at Park City for his three top-10 finishes this season.

“All of us have gotten quite a bit stronger, and that has transferred over to the jumping hill,” said Alborn, 5 feet 11 and 130 pounds. “Being in Park City gives us an opportunity for our training to be pretty consistent.... Top 10 is kind of an average performance in my mind. In a perfect world, I’d be the best guy. I know I can perform at a high level at a high-pressure competition.”

Jones, of Steamboat Springs, Colo., started jumping when he was 5.

“The adrenaline rush is what keeps me coming back,” said Jones, also slender at 5-9 and 120 pounds. “As you keep moving on and refining your technique, the feeling gets more like flying.

“You’re flying at 50 mph. Nothing is holding you up.... You feel the pressure of the wind on your body and your skis and on a good jump, you feel the lift. It’s basically the closest thing to being a bird.”

Go Figure

It’s difficult to know what to make of the European figure skating championships.

Russia’s Alexei Yagudin won the men’s title at Lausanne, Switzerland, but was outskated in the long program by compatriot Alexander Abt, who trains at Lake Arrowhead. Evgeny Plushenko wasn’t there, pleading the need to rest a groin injury.

Yagudin had pulled out of the Russian national championships last month because of an ankle injury, leaving the Grand Prix Final as his last competition against Plushenko before the Games. Yagudin won the Grand Prix Final, but Plushenko has since changed his music from a disjointed medley to excerpts from “Carmen.”

Yagudin missed the opening quad of his final free skate at the European championship, landing one quad, six triples and two double loops.

“I know it’s not going to be enough to be an Olympic champion,” he said. “In 10 years, nobody will remember how I skated in the Europeans, but my name is going to be in the results. Of course, it’s way better to win with a great skate. But still, if I’m going to be Olympic champion with bad skating, I wouldn’t be that upset.”

Then there are the struggles of Irina Slutskaya, who finished second to fellow Russian Maria Butyrskaya, at 29 the oldest European champion ever. Slutskaya fell on a double axel in her qualifying program and again on a triple flip in her short program, and reports from Europe say she was generally lackluster. Coming after her flawed performances in winning last month’s Grand Prix Final, that’s not a good omen.

Born to Luge

Mark Grimmette and Brian Martin, the top-ranked U.S. luge duo, won’t be bunking at the Olympic Village.

The two have been renting a place in Park City, near Utah Olympic Park, and they plan to stay at their “luge house” during the Games.

Their decision is based on superstition and logistics.

“There’s a lot of distractions at the Olympic village,” Grimmette said. “At the ’98 Games we stayed at a Japanese family’s house and it worked out well.”

Said Martin: “Not to mention they’re predicting it’s going to take three hours to get from Salt Lake over the summit [to Utah Olympic Park].”

Grimmette and Martin won bronze at Nagano, and they’re fifth in the World Cup standings.

Here and There

Chris Witty, the only U.S. long-track speedskater to win a medal at Nagano in 1998, was relieved to learn mononucleosis was the cause of her constant fatigue. When U.S. Coach Tom Cushman went to her hotel room to tell her the diagnosis and hesitated before speaking, she greeted him by saying, “I’m not sick and dying, am I?”

She withdrew from last weekend’s world sprint championships but plans to compete at Salt Lake City.

Figure skater Naomi Nari Nam of Irvine, plagued by injuries since she finished second at the 1999 U.S. championships, plans to resume full training at Aliso Viejo this week for the first time in more than a year.

“She has a lot of work to catch up,” said her coach, John Nicks, who also coaches Olympian Sasha Cohen. “She and Sasha used to enjoy working together. They challenge each other, and we’re all looking forward to seeing her out there again.”

Sarajevo figure skating gold medalist Scott Hamilton, diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1997, said he feels fine and must undergo only one more scan to monitor his progress. “I still go for physicals all the time,” said Hamilton, who has become a spokesman for self-examination and early cancer detection. “I have to practice what I preach.” Hamilton is taking a year off from Stars on Ice but hopes to stage a show in Las Vegas in the next year.

Long Beach will host the U.S. Olympic Water Polo trials in June 2004. It was previously awarded the 2004 swim trials.... Although North and South Korea agreed to let their athletes march into the Games together, as they did at Sydney for the first time since the nation was divided in 1945, no North Korean athlete has qualified for the Games.... Japan’s Olympic Committee scrapped a plan to have athletes bring gas masks to Salt Lake City as protection in case of a biochemical attack.

“Given all the efforts going into security preparations, we just thought it would be rude for us to take them,” a spokesman said.