U.S. Track Put on Notice

In the wake of what may be the most significant steroid bust in U.S. and Olympic history, anti-doping authorities said Friday that U.S. track and field officials suffer from a “major credibility gap” and the U.S. Olympic Committee said it would use “all available powers” to address the situation.

The day after authorities announced they had unearthed a new designer steroid apparently ingested by “several” U.S. athletes, the head of a Bay Area laboratory linked by anti-doping officials to the steroid’s development and distribution said he was told by athletes that 40 of them have been called to testify beginning next week before a federal grand jury in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, Olympic insiders and anti-doping experts in the United States and elsewhere assailed the effect on the image of all U.S. athletes, not just those in track and field, which has been linked to doping problems in recent months. .

“This just kills us,” said LeRoy Walker, a former USOC president.

Bill Martin, the USOC’s acting president, on Friday demanded an action plan from USA Track & Field by Nov. 17 aimed at “restoring the credibility of the sport of track and field.”

If the USOC remains unsatisfied, Martin said, the USOC will not hesitate to consider all financial and political leverage, including the possibility of de-certifying USATF as the nation’s governing body for track and field.

“We wouldn’t rule anything out,” Martin said, comparing the process to the NCAA’s “death penalty” for problem-plagued schools. “We say, ‘Go away. You’re gone.’ We’ve had some experience in this area,” with other federations. “It may happen again.”

USATF’s chief executive, Craig Masback, said, “I can state clearly

” ... As long as there is a single athlete cheating and getting away with it,” Masback said, “there’s a problem.”

U.S. Anti-Doping Agency officials announced Thursday they had unearthed widespread use by track and field athletes this summer of a steroid called tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG, and linked its development and distribution to a Burlingame, Calif.-based nutritional supplement laboratory, Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO, founded by Victor Conte.

The lab was raided Sept. 3 by federal and local law enforcement agents.

Conte has denied any wrongdoing. He said in an e-mail to Associated Press he had been told by athletes about their being called to testify starting next week.

The names of the “several” athletes, as well as the number at issue, remain uncertain. It remains to be seen how significantly the case will affect selection for the U.S. Olympic team at next year’s Athens Summer Games. A steroid ban typically draws a two-year ban.

USADA, which oversees drug testing for all U.S. Olympic sports federations, said an anonymous tipster, a self-described “high-profile” coach, provided a sample of THG, and identified the source of the drug as Conte.

USADA reviewed the tests of 350 competitors at the U.S. track championships in June at Stanford, then ordered 200 other tests throughout the summer. Those tests produced the “several” positive findings of what’s called an athlete’s “A” sample.

Samples are divided into two parts, “A” and “B.” The next step is for the “B” samples to be tested; if those also are positive, a review and appeals process is launched. Names of those involved might be released by December.

“If all this turns out to be true,” Dick Pound, head of the Montreal-based World Anti-Doping Agency, said, “it’s even more clear than ever that USATF is totally out of control.”

He added, “There’s a major credibility gap here. I don’t want to make it sound like the United States is the only [nation] doping. It’s not. But this capacity for double think and denial is becoming a joke.”

Steven Ungerleider, an Oregon researcher who wrote a highly acclaimed book about the state-sponsored East German doping program of a generation ago, said he recalled interviewing those involved with the East German system, and having them insist that the U.S. sports scene also had “doping docs and very smart chemists ... and it would just be a matter of time when the truth came out.”

” ... Now they get to laugh at us,” he said.

Bill Rosenberg, executive director of USA Judo, said of USADA’s announcement about U.S. track athletes, “I think, perception-wise, it hurts us all,” adding, “an American is an American, regardless of” the sport.

THG is a chemical cousin of banned steroids. Steroids are derivatives of the male hormone testosterone, and help an athlete get bigger and stronger and, perhaps more important, train longer and harder.

BALCO provides blood-testing services for many top athletes, including baseball star Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants and Olympic sprint champion Marion Jones.

Terry Madden, USADA’s chief executive, repeatedly declined Thursday to name any athlete under suspicion. However, he said, “I know of no other drug bust that is larger than this involving the number of athletes involved.”

Even before Thursday’s announcement, the USOC had invited USATF officials, including President Bill Roe and chief executive Masback, here to discuss other doping issues.

In large part, that was because just last month, the USOC had been called to International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, for a review of USOC doping policies in the 1980s and 1990s.

Among the cases at issue was Jerome Young, a U.S. sprinter, who won a gold medal at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 after testing positive the year before for the banned steroid nandrolone. He was cleared to compete by a secret USATF hearing and appeals process.

USATF had long declined to identify him. On Aug. 27, The Times identified the athlete as Young. The USOC last month confirmed that Young was the athlete at issue, and the IOC now wants track’s worldwide governing body, the International Assn. of Athletics Federations, to review the case.

At stake are the gold medals won by Young and five others, including sprint legend Michael Johnson.

In addition, U.S. sprinter Kelli White, who won gold in August in Paris at the world track championships in the 100- and 200-meter sprints, tested positive for the stimulant modafinil; USADA is currently considering her case and her medals are also at risk. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that White has been subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury.

And just last week, European newspapers confirmed that U.S. hurdler Chris Phillips also tested positive for modafinil; he finished sixth in the 110-meter hurdles in Paris.

A review of the 350 samples from the June U.S. track championships, meanwhile, also led officials to discover several positive tests for modafinil.

White claims she was taking it for narcolepsy, a sleep disorder.

USATF officials had been expecting to deal Friday with the Young, White and perhaps Phillips cases. Then came the thunderclap Thursday from USADA.

Jim Scherr, the USOC’s senior managing director, said, “I believe the vast majority of U.S. athletes are clean and are competing within the rules. Quite obviously, there are a few who weren’t.”