Ban for Steroid Use Is Called a Ploy

Senior Olympic, international track and field, and world anti-doping officials predicted Monday that USA Track & Field’s plan for lifetime bans for first-time steroid offenders wouldn’t pass legal muster, suggesting it appeared to be a ploy aimed at diverting attention from doping concerns involving U.S. track.

USATF adopted the proposal Sunday at an assembly in Greensboro, N.C., after having repeatedly declined to explain why U.S. sprinter Jerome Young was cleared to compete at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. He won a gold medal in the 1,600-meter relay after having tested positive for the banned steroid nandrolone in 1999.

“They’re trying to suck and whistle at the same time,” World Anti-Doping Agency President Dick Pound said in a telephone interview, calling the proposal a “complete grandstand play.”

Istvan Gyulai, the general secretary of the International Assn. of Athletics Federations, track’s worldwide governing body, said the proposal sends a “good message” about USATF’s desire to be taken seriously as it moves forward. But he added, referring to the Young matter, “Something is missing ... not only doing something about the future but to clarify the past.”

USATF spokeswoman Jill Geer, asked to respond to those remarks, said, “It’s not a ploy. Honest to God.

“It is a very serious attempt to make our sport better and cleaner in the United States. The effect might be that it’s good PR and, if so, fine. But that has no bearing on the reasons for pursuing this.”

USATF delegates approved the proposal at the close of a year in which U.S. track practices repeatedly have come under question. Four U.S. track champions, for example, have tested positive for the recently discovered designer steroid THG. And USATF, in a position that continues to frustrate Olympic and IAAF officials, has continued to maintained strict confidentiality in the Young case, saying that it is bound by an arbitration ruling.

The U.S. Olympic Committee has indicated willingness to impose sanctions, including the possibility of decertifying USATF as the nation’s governing body for track, if USATF is not more forthcoming in the Young case in particular.

The USOC’s latest formal request for an explanation brought a USATF response last month that provided little, if anything, new. Jim McCarthy, a member of a special USOC panel charged with reviewing USATF’s reply, said late Monday that the panel intends to report to the USOC’s ruling executive committee that it is “disappointed” in the USATF.

USATF’s proposal for a first-offender life ban appears to put it at odds with the world anti-doping code, enacted in March. The code calls for a two-year ban for steroid offenses.

The head of the international rowing federation, Denis Oswald of Switzerland, who also is a key IOC member, said late last week that the rowing federation once relied on a first-offender life ban -- but switched to two years to be in line with the new code.

The proposal also would appear to be at odds with legal precedent. IAAF sought in the 1990s to impose four-year bans for first offenses. But it had to drop to a two-year ban after courts in a number of countries said a four-year ban was too harsh.

The initiative also may run afoul of the 1978 Amateur Sports Act, the federal legislation that guides Olympic sport in the United States.

Washington attorney Mark Levinstein, an expert on the law who has defended numerous doping cases on behalf of athletes but also has done considerable legal work on behalf of the USOC, called a first-offender life ban “an overreaction and a not-well-thought-out overreaction,” adding, “I don’t think it’s permitted by the [Sports Act.]”

The act says that a governing body may not have rules of eligibility that are “more restrictive” than those of the relevant international federation, in this case the IAAF.

USATF officials said in enacting the policy that it would not take effect until questions about its legality could be resolved.

Pound said: “What do you say when you know that you’re adopting a policy that contravenes the rules of your international federation, the world anti-doping code, which has been adopted by your [international] federation, your national Olympic committee, and will not be enforced by any court in the world? Yet you adopt it? It’s being set up to fail.”