USOC Details Medalist Testing

The U.S. Olympic Committee has identified 24 athletes who tested positive for banned drugs, then won medals at the Olympic Games over the last two decades, but it says there is “no evidence” of a widespread or systematic cover-up, according to documents obtained by The Times.

In all but one of those 24 cases, the athlete had “already served a suspension or received other appropriate discipline under the applicable rules,” the USOC, after an extensive review, indicated in materials sent to the International Olympic Committee.

The one exception was U.S. sprinter Jerome Young, who won a gold medal as a member of the men’s 1,600-meter relay team at Sydney in 2000 after having tested positive in 1999 for the banned steroid nandrolone. There is “no documentation” in USOC files offering a “reasonable explanation” for USA Track & Field’s decision to exonerate Young. That occurred after Young had appealed his doping violation, according to the USOC.

The USOC report found that the “overwhelming” number of the 24 positive tests were for stimulants commonly found in over-the-counter cold medicines. The names of most of the two dozen athletes were not disclosed.

The USOC’s full report is to be presented here Thursday at a meeting of the IOC’s policy-making executive board. The report was prepared in response to long-standing concerns about an alleged U.S. cover-up, which U.S. authorities have denied, and sets the stage for an IOC review of U.S. anti-doping policies and action on Young’s case.

Dick Pound, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency in Montreal, has called for the IOC to strip the winning U.S. 1,600-meter team of its medals, saying Young’s participation undercut the legitimacy of the victory. A joint IOC-WADA inquiry into the Young case is continuing. Findings are also due here this week.

Young ran in the opening and semifinal rounds of the relay. In the final, the U.S. team, anchored by Michael Johnson, cruised to an easy victory in 2 minutes 56.35 seconds. Nigeria finished second, in 2:58.68, Jamaica third in 2:58.78.

Young and five other U.S. athletes were awarded gold medals.

Michael Fennell, president of the Jamaica Olympic Assn. Ltd., said in a telephone interview this week that he was urging IOC President Jacques Rogge to undertake a review of the Young case.

He said he and the Jamaican team were “very interested” in the outcome, and not only because a disqualification of the Americans would boost the Jamaicans to silver from bronze.

In a remark that underscores a widely held perception outside the United States -- that the U.S. is quick to accuse athletes and sports officials from other countries of wrongdoing but seeks to bend the rules to benefit Americans -- Fennell said he was hoping to see “far more transparency in what we are doing,” among Olympic authorities, “particularly from the leading countries.”

Sir Arlington G. Butler, president of the Bahamas Olympic Assn., in a letter written Wednesday to Rogge, urged the IOC to “exert all efforts.”

The Bahamian team finished fourth in the 1,600-meter relay, at 2:59.23. It stands to earn bronze if the U.S. team is stripped.

Butler said he was eager for “whatever assistance [the IOC] could give us in this matter,” noting that bronze “would be quite an achievement for the youngsters of the Bahamas, who have at this point been denied the possibility of any medal.”

Nigerian officials could not be located for comment.

It is unclear whether the USOC report on anti-doping practices will do what the USOC wants: clear up concerns within the IOC and elsewhere about U.S. policies.

The IOC in May asked for “generic” but wide-ranging information about the USOC’s role in and oversight of doping practices going back to the 1980s. It made the move after news reports detailing irregularities on tests involving track stars Carl Lewis, Joe DeLoach and other U.S. athletes.

Sports Illustrated and the Orange County Register, relying on documents provided by the USOC’s former director of drug control, Wade Exum, named Lewis, DeLoach and others and alleged that more than 100 U.S. athletes had tested positive for drugs from 1988 to 2000, including 19 that went on to win medals.

The report to be presented to the IOC was put together by Rich Young, an attorney from Colorado Springs, Colo., who is recognized in Olympic circles as an expert in doping matters. He reviewed about 700,000 documents. Rich Young is not related to Jerome Young.

In part, the report responds to significant IOC concerns about the way the U.S. process worked in the 1980s and 1990s, and how it differs from that today.

Then, the USOC collected testing samples and reported any positive test to the appropriate federation, such as USA Hockey or the U.S. Tennis Assn. The federation managed the sanction and appeal process. The USOC typically did not second-guess.

Now, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency is in charge. Since October 2000, the USOC has essentially been out of the anti-doping campaign.

The USADA was formed in part because U.S. Olympic authorities recognized the former process as flawed. Record-keeping was sometimes “chaotic,” according to materials obtained by The Times. In addition, as attorney Young conducted his review, documents reflecting the ways various U.S. sports federations handled positive doping tests “could not always be located.”

Still, according to attorney Young’s review, there is “no evidence” of a cover-up in the hundreds of thousands of pages. USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said Tuesday, “These cases were adjudicated in accordance with the applicable rules of the time. There was no cover-up. There was no attempt to cover anything up.”

Young’s review also found that in the largest category of cases, more than half the positive tests were for the asthma drug salbutamol, which under IOC rules would not have been considered doping. Lewis and DeLoach were appropriately cleared to compete after testing positive for trace amounts of stimulants commonly found in over-the-counter products, officials have said.

The USOC, hoping to forestall further IOC intervention, recently told the IOC it was “going beyond” what the IOC asked for in May by detailing the cases of the 24 medalists. The USOC report also says there were 24 medalists involved, not 19, as Exum indicated. It is believed that 19 of the 24 involved low-level stimulants such as pseudoephedrine or caffeine, with the punishment often amounting to a warning under the rules in place years ago. Such substances today are considered benign, and Tuesday, the WADA executive board approved a recommendation to remove caffeine and pseudoephedrine from the list of banned substances.

Complete details regarding the five other cases were not immediately available.

In keeping with USOC practice, the names of most of the 24 medalists are not revealed in the report -- the exceptions being Lewis, DeLoach and a few others identified in press reports earlier this year. Young, for instance, is referred to in one extract only as “the case of the ‘unidentified’ U.S. athlete who won a medal in Sydney.” The Times identified that person as Young on Aug. 27.

The restrictive interpretation of U.S. confidentiality rules has for years been a source of friction within Olympic circles, with the case of the so-called “unnamed U.S. medalist from Sydney” a particular point of conflict. U.S. officials maintain that rules in place during the 1980s and 1990s generally precluded the release of a name unless and until an athlete had been ultimately found to have violated doping regulations.

Now, under USADA’s direction, a name is disclosed far earlier in the process.