No winners in sports drug scandals

By PHIL TAYLOR


Petr korda has some advice for fellow tennis star Greg Rusedski, the sportsman-of-the-moment in the doping spotlight. Battle as you might, the stigma will remain, was Korda's message after Rusedski this month announced he had tested positive for the steroid nandrolone.

Rusedski strenuously proclaims his innocence. That will make no difference, said Korda, a former world No 2.

He has been there: he tested positive to the same muscle-building agent at Wimbledon in 1998, ultimately leading to a one-year ban and his retirement.

"He will always have a battle to clear his name. People will always remember he tested positive for nandrolone."

If there was a tone of utu in Korda's comments, it could be because of what Rusedski said when Korda's positive came to light. "If Korda is innocent, why does he not tell us why? It is very hard to accept that the drugs got into his body by accident. It is hard not to look at him now without having a great deal of suspicion."

Many people will be thinking the same about Rusedski. The two sportsmen highlight some frustrating themes of doping in sport. All those caught are innocent. All positives can be explained. And yet the pervading impression is the true extent of doping is hidden and vast.

That impression was inadvertently reinforced by John McEnroe who, trying to support Rusedski and defend tennis, revealed he was on steroids during his career.

"For six years I was unaware I was being given a form of steroid of the legal kind they used to give horses, until they decided it was too strong even for horses." McEnroe has not elaborated.

There are many questions. What was the steroid? Why was he given it? By whom? Could it have given him an unfair advantage? Could it explain his famously flammable on-court demeanour? And, in the interest of cleaning up sport, why didn't he fess up sooner?

His truncated admission appears an about-turn of his denial two years ago when ex-wife Tatum O'Neal claimed he took steroids during his career.

Back then, McEnroe said he was disappointed O'Neal did not see things "more accurately" or "share my concern for the welfare of our children".

Shouldn't he explain how and why he was unaware he was being doped, especially when that doesn't tally with O'Neal's comment? On United States television in 2001 she intimated he knowingly took steroids, using them during a comeback after the birth of their son, Sean, in 1987. Asked if tennis officials knew, O'Neal said: "I never read about it. I made him stop because he was becoming violent".

Though it may seem Rusedski's comments about Korda have returned to haunt him - as did Carl Lewis' condemnation of disgraced sprinter Ben Johnson when Lewis was last year revealed to have been the beneficiary of a doping cover-up - Britain's No 2 player is throwing powder and shot at winning this fight.

He's attacked the public relations battle with vigour and hired heavyweight legal help. Rusedski is trying to explain how and why the steroid may have got into his system without his knowledge. And he may have an arguable case.

Nandrolone is a problem child of sports doping. It's been used by doctors since the 1960s to treat conditions such as cancer and blood disorders. The appeal for athletes is the muscle-building and recuperative qualities it shares with other anabolic steroids, allowing them to train harder and recover quicker.

It was little known until athletes began testing positive for it in the late 1990s. In 1999, 349 nandrolone positives were reported in all sports worldwide. There is no evidence it occurs naturally at more than infinitesimal levels, but sports supplements have been shown to be contaminated with it and the leap in positives has come during a boom in the supplements industry.

A study by German scientists in 2000 confirmed this. They bought a variety of supplements which they fed to volunteers. Three of the supplements - all made in the US and claiming to contain no banned substances - were found to contain traces of anabolic steroids.

Urine tests taken four hours after the volunteers took one capsule of each of the three supplements showed the presence of nandrolone beyond the allowable limits in sport. The levels ranged from 3.8 nanograms per millilitre of urine to 623 ng/ml - the latter is 311 times the legal limit for men of 2ng/ml (the limit for women is 5ng/ml).

Because the amount of steroids in each capsule varied and was at a level far below that in steroid products, the scientists put the drugs' presence down to contamination.

The German study is backed by International Olympic Committee tests in 2002 of supplements in several countries which found almost 20 per cent contained traces of banned drugs.

Rusedski's case is that his positive is the result of supplements given to him by the tennis tour body ATP's own trainers.

Each preparation of the drug possesses individual chemical features, giving it a unique "fingerprint". Rusedski hopes this fingerprint is his ace.

Much of his case rests on his claim that the fingerprint in his test is identical to the seven other positive samples discovered between August 2002 and May last year, as well as 39 other samples which showed elevated nandrolone levels below the legal limit, proving that each was caused by the same source.

The ATP has accepted that the fingerprint, the pattern of peaks and troughs in the sample profile, is identical, and has assumed the common source came from a supplement, an electrolyte, given to players during tournaments.

In the case of the seven positive tests, the ATP eventually admitted fault and did not proceed with bans. In one case, Czech player Bohdan Ulihach successfully appealed his two-year ban when he discovered his fingerprint matched the others. He used a legal principle Rusedski will employ of "equitable estoppel" which dictates a person can't be prosecuted for an offence that is the fault of the prosecuting authority.

Open and shut case, you might think.

Rusedski's lawyer thinks so. He's indicated they will seek compensation for distress and costs. But others - notably the World Anti-Doping Authority (Wada) - have doubts about the ATP's conclusion that a contaminated supplement provided by their own staff is to blame.

Rusedski tested positive two weeks after the ATP had ordered its trainers to stop handing out supplements and it is considered inconceivable the drug could still have been in his system.

The one thing Rusedski or the ATP have failed to explain is how, then, the drug got into his system.

"What it does highlight," says Wada's director-general, New Zealander David Howman, "is that if his fingerprint is the same as the other positives, then that might also suggest the theory that was advanced about the seven is implausible and it was not [caused by] the so-called electrolytes distributed by the ATP trainers."

The ATP inquiry pointed the finger at the electrolytes but electrolytes made available for testing were all negative.

Wada's scepticism is necessary and understandable given the complicity of administrators in many cover-ups.

The ATP has refused to sign up to doping guidelines Wada is seeking to impose on all sports. It began as a players' union and evolved into its current all-powerful position as employer, administrator and promoter, choosing to go its own way. It hires its own drug testers, draws up its own rules, fixes its own punishments and sits as judge and jury.

It may be that the ATP-supplied supplement was to blame. Or a convenient way to explain a large number of positives and exonerate the athletes.

Though levels are time-sensitive, a low level of nandrolone may support an athlete's contention of inadvertent use. Rusedski's was 5ng/ml. British sprinter Linford Christie was reportedly 200ng/ml and US field athlete C.J. Hunter, sprint star Marion Jones' ex-husband, was 2000.

One of the lowest known positives was for New Zealand Olympic swimmer Trent Bray, whose samples were 4ng/ml and 3.5ng/ml. Bray says the cause is a mystery but he suspects contaminated supplements.

He was caught before it was confirmed supplements could be contaminated. He took his supplements to the Institute of Environmental Science and Research, the organisation used in murder investigations, but says its equipment wasn't sensitive enough to pick up small traces.

Bray spent more than $50,000 overturning his New Zealand suspension but was ultimately banned for two years by world swimming body Fina. He finds it galling that so many continue to test positive for nandrolone. Surely, he says, cheats would chose a drug which wasn't so easily detected.

"There are people testing positive for it all over the place. It's just stupid. They obviously don't care about false positives. It frustrates me because I don't know what to say. I know I didn't do anything and I know a lot of people who know me know I didn't, but there's always in the back of people's minds that maybe he did."

Crying innocent, as Korda has advised Rusedski, may be futile in an era when each passing week provides a new doping revelation. This week it was US women's hammer champion Melissa Price.

She completed an unwelcome family double in becoming her country's fourth track and field athlete to test positive for THG, a steroid designed specifically for sports cheats which was discovered only because of a tip-off.

Price is the wife of Britain's leading shot-putter Carl Myerscough, who has served a two-year suspension after a positive test for a cocktail of performance-enhancing substances.

Not that Wada chief Dick Pound should worry. His concern is the reputation of sport. The bottom line is athletes are responsible for what is in their own bodies.

"You would think that anybody who has been paying the slightest attention would see that these things are always coming up," Pound said about the Rusedski affair. "If you don't know what is in a supplement, then don't take it."