HOW DOES THE NEW AGENCY MEASURE UP?

The United States Anti-Doping Agency opened its doors just over four years ago, promising to remove the proverbial "fox guarding the hen house" and bring transparency to the crusade against sports doping. How has USADA measured up apart from the BALCO headlines?

While USADA is held up around the world as a role model for national anti-doping efforts, the agency functions more to consolidate U.S. anti- doping efforts and fund research than to provide doping control details to assure critics that athletes are being tested, their results reported, and sanctions are appropriate. The latter role appears to fall to national governing bodies and international federations and in most cases there's not enough public information to evaluate USADA's program.

As for transparency, only the most cursory information about test results is visible on USADA's website. You're not going to find out when and where a Lance Armstrong or a Marion Jones or a Michael Phelps has been tested, whether they've been tested in or out of competition, or if they've been tested for EPO or human growth hormone. You're not going to find out if they had any initial "adverse findings" which later were determined by USADA's Review Board to be negative results. You won't find out if they have therapeutic use exemptions for banned substances.

Depending on the sport and your ability to navigate the Internet, significant information not found on the USADA website may be available on the websites of the sport's national and international federations.

For track and field, however, neither USATF nor the IAAF have much to offer on their websites that illuminates drug testing, especially when compared to what you'll find at USA Swimming or FINA (the international swim federation) websites. USA Swimming, for example publishes a spreadsheet showing when and where all its athletes (including Phelps) have been tested, both in and out of competition.

USATF is only doing what it has been required by its own rules to do for years: publish the names of athletes who have returned negative doping tests, in this case on a quarterly basis. There is also a list of athletes currently serving suspensions.

The IAAF, at least, is publicly talking about a major upgrade to its website to include doping cases as they unfold. At a recent meeting between representatives of the IAAF's Athletes, Coaches and Medical and Anti-doping Commissions, the athletes pressed for greater transparency.

At present, though, the IAAF doesn't publish a list of all athletes who have been tested and although it does a timely job of publishing names of athletes who have been sanctioned, that information is difficult to find on the website because it's contained in the IAAF newsletter, not on an identified link. The lack of information makes it impossible to verify the number of tests an elite track athlete has undergone in various settings, through different groups, such as USADA, the NCAA or the IAAF.

RELIEF FOR NATIONAL GOVERNING BODIES

One of USADA's goals was eliminating national governing bodies' involvement in sanctioning. NGBs such as USATF no longer have to prosecute the athletes they're trying to cultivate. The agency is also valuable as a centralized source of anti-doping information and education programs.

Meanwhile, foxes or not, there still are a number of familiar faces inside the hen house. USADA is dotted with staff and volunteers who were closely tied to the USOC's laxly enforced anti-doping program of the 1980s and 90s and/or to the creation of USADA.

TIES TO PAST

Terry Madden resigned his position as chief of staff for then-USOC president Bill Hybl, to become CEO of USADA in 2000. He was staff liaison with the Hybl-appointed USOC Select Task Force on Drug Externalization which created the new anti-doping agency. He also participated in USOC Anti-Doping Committee meetings.

Larry Bowers, USADA's Senior Managing Director of Technical Information and Resources, was previously head of the now-shuttered Indianapolis laboratory which was responsible for many of the mishandled USATF doping cases detailed in the McLaren Report in 2001. Bowers was a member of the USOC Anti-Doping Committee, as was Dr. Ralph Hale, current chairman of the USADA board. Baaron Pittenger, former chair of that committee, appears to be connected to the new agency, having edited USADA's 2003 annual report. Pittenger, a former executive director of the USOC, was co-chair of the Select Task Force.

Two recipients of USADA research grants, Dr. Don Catlin of the IOC- accredited lab at UCLA, and Thomas Murray, president of The Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute, were members of the USOC Anti- Doping Committee. Catlin, who is credited with breaking open the designer-drug component of the BALCO investigation, was on the ground floor of the USOC's anti-doping efforts beginning with the 1984 Olympics. He's listed as the principal investigator on USADA-funded research projects receiving close to $1.2 million since 2001. Murray, who also served on the Select Task Force and is chair of WADA's Ethical Issues & Review Panel, was principal investigator for a Hastings project which received $384,000 from USADA in 2002-03 .

The USOC Anti-Doping Committee oversaw a program that eschewed the concept of strict liability in doping and allowed many athletes to avoid doping sanctions by claiming "inadvertent use." It also let the unannounced testing program wither away in the lead-up to the Sydney Olympic Games.

The USOC mission to "externalize" anti-doping efforts did result in an "external" agency, but one with no discernible oversight and partially populated with people who had been part of the USOC's previous "internal" anti-doping structure.

COMPARING THE NUMBERS

USADA's most comprehensive information is found in its annual reports (2004 is not yet available). A look at 2003 shows five U.S. track and field athletes sanctioned (one case emanated from 2002 testing) and names the banned substance. That year 1275 tests were administered by USADA to track and field athletes, with 618 tests done out-of- competition. The percentage of sanctions that year compared to total tests administered: 0.4 percent.

Some track cases, notably BALCO-related ones, presumably were still pending at the end of 2003 although that information is not detailed by sport in the annual report.

In 2002, all IAAF drug testing resulted in a positive rate of 2.85 percent. At the in-competition testing at the 2003 IAAF World Championships in Paris, 1.23 percent of those tested were announced positive.

USADA, with a $10-million budget (including $4.3 million devoted to drug testing, $2.3 million to research and $1.3 million to legal expenses) performed an all-sports total of 6,890 tests in 2003 with 46 "adverse findings" for U.S. athletes. The year produced 25 sanctions, seven "no violations" and 14 pending cases. By way of comparison, the former USOC doping control program--budget $3 million--conducted 5355 tests (1345 unannounced) in 1999 with 207 adverse findings resulting in just 10 sanctions (that number later increased by one with the belated sanction of 400-meter runner Jerome Young).

By way of further comparison, consider that in 1984, when the USOC was implementing what then-USOC Executive Director F. Don Miller described as informal, "educational" testing, a sample of 60 track and field athletes produced 34 "possible positive findings", a rate of 57 percent. (A USOC press release later referred to the 1984 U.S. Olympic team as "totally drug-free and clean.")

WADA'S ROLE

WADA is unlikely to play a role in transparency of test information unless it decides transparency needs to be part of its "harmonization" goals.

The agency, which has just selected CGI Group Inc. to manage the infrastructure for a worldwide anti-doping database, will be allowed "to release statistics but no specific information will be published," writes WADA spokesman Frederic Donze. "Specific information...will be shared with relevant (WADA) stakeholders through various levels of access, to help coordinate testing and data management... International Federations have their own ways of releasing information on doping control results and it is up to them to decide whether they want to release all doping control results on their websites."

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of any doping control program, the full facts must be made available--how many tests attempted and accounted for: who, when, where, under what circumstances, what kind of tests, initial findings and subsequent disposition of those findings. Therapeutic exemptions also must be accounted for.

Like those craft-store kits, you can't paint the complete picture without the numbers.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

GLENN LATIMER, USATF's new Men's Long Distance Running Chair, pegs distance runner Dathan Ritzenhein as the kind of star he wants the sport to market: "We could build a whole new running boom for the 'sport' of running around Dathan at the World level. He is a huge talent, and he is intelligent and personable. Without wishing to jinx him, he ought to develop into an American superstar athlete."

Latimer also tells Running USA that running needs its own niche channel on television and that U.S. distance running needs more support for its developmental programs. It's a "tough road to get funding for LDR from USATF," he says. "Sprinting rules because (supposedly) they bring home the gold. I think we have to try to use the success of Meb (Keflezighi) and Deena (Kastor) to pry the funding door open a little."

LaShawn Merritt carries some of the sprint expectations on his 18-year- old back. The East Carolina University freshman is already tabbed as the next man to challenge the 43-second barrier in the 400 (Michael Johnson's world record is 43.18). Merritt's 44.93 indoor time is close to Johnson' indoor world record of 44.63 and shows his progress since winning the outdoors World Juniors last summer in 45.25. A rivalry between Merritt and reigning Olympic 400 champion Jeremy Wariner could give U.S. track an important spark.

CAMP KENYA

KENYA'S DYSFUNCTIONAL distance running program was again in evidence heading into this month's World Cross Country Championships in France.

Susan Chepkemei, runner-up in the 2004 New York Marathon, was not only dropped from the World Cross team after she failed to report to the national team's training camp, but banned by Athletics Kenya from all national and international competition for the rest of the year. World 5,000-meter champion Eliud Kipchoge and several other runners appeared at the camp just short of their deadline.

According to The Standard, a number of top runners had requested permission to train at other camps, in order to stay with their personal coaches.

With Ethiopian sensation Kenenisa Bekele looking vulnerable this season, Kipchoge is expected to "carry on as a one-man demolition team" at World Cross, says The Daily Nation, predicting an otherwise bleak meet for Kenya. "His colleagues simply lack what it takes."

EUROPEANS SHUT OUT?

Meanwhile, Italian manager Gianni Demadonna, who works with African runners and organizes training camps in Kenya, tells the East African Standard that the increasing number of defections of African runners to the Gulf States may result in "a situation with no single European athlete in the finals of distance races at Grand Prix, Olympic or World Championships."

"Very soon, we shall have a final of 3,000m steeplechase, 5,000m or 10,000m with three Qataris, but all of them former Kenyans, three Kenyans, three Ethiopians, one Moroccan, one Tanzanian and no European. This will be the consequence of defections and it won't be good for the sport," he says. "This will kill the interest of other nations as they will feel left out of the sport." Several of Demadonna's Kenyan-born runners have sought citizenship in the Gulf States.

Some defectors such as Saif Saeed Shaheen, formerly Stephen Cherono, return to Kenya to train, which displeases Kipchoge Keino, the legendary runner and head of the Kenyan National Olympic Committee. He wants them deported, reports the Standard, accusing them of taking advantage of the Kenyan facilities to beat patriotic Kenyans. Demadonna responds that Kenyan camps frequently host foreign runners.

With Keino's blessing, for example, Mike Kosgei, Kenya's former head track coach, is now identifying distance talent in Mozambique through the Olympic Solidarity Program, with plans to bring runners to Kenya's high performance training center in Eldoret. He continues to coach selected athletes, including world 5,000-meter champion Eliud Kipchoge, reports Reuters.

DETECTING GENE DOPING

PROSPECTS for detection of gene doping are improving, based on research which indicates that "introducing gene X (causes) body-wide changes--a genetic signature," says Dr. Theodore Friedmann, director of the gene therapy program at the the University of California, San Diego.

The conventional wisdom that testing for gene doping is difficult is "not true," he says. "The approach is to apply modern genome testing to detect foreign genes."

"Our aim is detecting genetic signatures for a tissue, or even circulating blood, (that has) seen a foreign gene," he explains. Initially, athletes feared the prospect of having to submit to something as invasive as a muscle biopsy to detect gene doping. Instead, a blood sample one day may be able to provide that information.

Speaking at a forum on Genetic Enhancement and Sports sponsored by Portland State University in Oregon last month, Friedmann indicated that "there are signs one can detect" and that "the world of genome analysis (is going) to be thrown heavily at the sports doping world. It's coming quickly."

"Gene therapy is with us...sport offers a very attractive door for application of genetic techniques and enhancement," says Friedmann. "We know the political, financial and international pressures behind sports, (a) huge amount of money with many rogues who are interested in the trappings of victory...The techniques are probably too easy to avoid and are about to be with us."

Yet Friedmann emphasizes that current gene therapy, when used in a medically appropriate setting, is "extremely difficult," requires elaborate review and with one exception, has not produced "sparkling success." And that one success story, involving the "Bubble Boy" syndrome (the absence of the immune system), has a terrible ending.

"The virus (used in the gene therapy) carries normal genes into cells, to develop the immune system the children didn't have before," he explains. "It may be that some of them are cured...14 or 15 patients were treated, or looked to be treated, but three children developed leukemia as a direct result of treatment. Three terrible results, nine possible cures."

Freidmann agrees that in any context, gene doping at present is dangerous but as another panelist, Case Western Reserve University law and biomedical ethics professor Maxwell Mehlman, points out, that will change.

"Over time we will improve our ability to do this gene transfer technology. The demand is so great, the money pouring in is so great (that we) can assume we will be able to do so safely," says Mehlman. "It will be a relatively safe and highly effective means of enhancing performance."

BALCO UPDATE

KELLI WHITE, banned for BALCO-related doping offenses, says publicly that Dr. Brian Goldman diagnosed her with narcolepsy to cover up her use of the stimulant modafinil, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. According to grand jury documents, says the paper, Tim Montgomery said that Goldman wrote steroid prescriptions for him under a false name. The doctor, who has links to BALCO, declined to discuss White's accusations and denied Montgomery's.

"Both athletes said they had never met Goldman at the time," reports the Chronicle.

NEW DESIGNER DRUG CONFISCATED

In other news, another designer steroid, this one confiscated in Canada, may be linked to THG of BALCO fame. This one, desoxy-methyl testosterone (DMT), "was found in packaging similar to that of THG," reports the Mercury News.

"It's coming from the same source (as THG)," Christiane Ayotte, head of the Montreal lab which identified DMT, tells the Mercury News. The new drug has chemical similarities to THG.

Canada Border Services Agency officials discovered vials of both DMT and THG, as well as 70 vials of human growth hormone, in the possession of Canadian sprinter Derek Dueck when he tried to cross the border in December of 2003.

The Mercury News suggests that based on information it has received, Illinois chemist Patrick Arnold would be the prime suspect as the source for both THG and DMT. He is known as the inventor of steroid precursors such as androstenedione. The paper also notes that a USADA official was in Raleigh, N.C. recently, asking about new drugs. Ayotte believes "at least one drug maker is researching old studies and using them as models for new steroids" and that DMT could be found in scientific literature of the 1960s, reports the Mercury News.

"We know some others are being used," Ayotte told the Mercury News. "I have one in front of me right now. We are trying to prove what it is."

MISSING CHINESE SWIMMERS

JOHN LEONARD, executive director of the American Swimming Coaches Association, fears that China is hiding elite young swimmers in its preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, notes Times Online. Leonard says that in late 2001 China identified 100 young swimmers for special treatment. Half went to the national training center in Beijing and have been competing openly. "What became of the other 50?" asks Leonard. "No one connected with Chinese swimming will say."

"Assurances from the Chinese Olympic Committee and China Swimming that they will be dope-free are nice," writes Leonard for Swimming World website, but "policies that are centrally planned may not be the way things are in far-flung provinces." Given the rise of China's women distance runners at the same times as its swimmers, the track and field community may want to be checking on the whereabouts of retired coach Ma Junren whose women runners still hold world records at 1500, 3000 and 10,000 meters.

China has also been attacked, particularly by Australians, for employing 70-year-old Helga Pfeifer, one the key figures in East Germany's state- run sports doping program. She is helping China set up a pool flume, the equivalent of a swimming treadmill. Both the Australian Swimming Coaches Association and the American Swimming Coaches Association are calling for Pfeifer to be banned from the sport.

Ironically, The Australian Institute of Sport hosted Pfeifer for three months in 1989 and "much of her research into legal training methods has been incorporated into Australian practices," writes Nicole Jeffery of The Australian.

Lu Yiping, a spokesman for the Shanghai group which hired Pfeifer, denied knowing of Pfeifer's past and said "it is of no interest to us," reports Jeffery.

China has also been the source of two newly discovered designer steroids.

TWO POINTS OF VIEW

FRANCE is under pressure from the IOC to relax its anti-doping laws, "which give considerable powers of search, seizure and interrogation to the police and judicial authorities," writes Michelle Verroken, former anti- doping head for the UK, in The Guardian. "The Ministry of Youth and Sport, though, has established an independent anti-doping agency that will recognize the (WADA) Code's requirements. IOC-appointed officials will be allowed to test and international sports organizations will be responsible for results management."

IOC president Jacques Rogge has told cities bidding for the 2012 Games that they must change their laws in order to comply with IOC and WADA rules.

Italy, where athletes face arrest and criminal charges for doping offenses, will allow IOC and WADA rules to take precedence at the Winter Olympics in Turin next year.

In Britain, however, a member of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, attorney Michael Beloff, suggests that his country should follow the lead of France and Italy and take action against drug suppliers and the athletes themselves.

Beloff told John Goodbody of The Times of London that "there is evidence galore that the sanctions are inadequate to deter many athletes, not only from gaining unfair advantage from drug use, but from putting their health, even lives, at risk."

Beloff explains in the Sweet and Maxwell International Sport Law Review that " a dishonest gold medal-winner has diminished the earning potential of the honest runner-up."

SHORTS

* POLE VAULTER YELENA ISINBAYEVA reportedly has cleared five meters (16-4 3/4) in practice, but until the recent meet in Lievin, France, she's been content to extend her world record by a centimeter at a time, collecting up to $30,000 each time she breaks the record.

At the late February Meeting Gaz de France she set her third indoor world record of the winter (and the 12th world record of her career) with a mark of 4.89m (16-1/2). But unlike the last two meets where she set records, she continued to jump and took one attempt at 5.05m (16-6 3/ 4).

* THE USA Indoor Championships were short on big names this year, with no World Championship team berths on the line. The focus shifted to field events, in particular, where Erin Gilreath's world-record breaking toss in the women's weight throw (80-3/24.46 meters) won't hold up for record purposes. Her implement was certified before the competition but when re-certified after the throw, was found to be too long in overall measurement, says meet referee Rita Somerlot in a Reuters story.

* GREEK sprinters Kostas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou have introduced new evidence in their doping case, causing a delay in a ruling from a Greek Amateur Athletics Association panel. A lawyer for the pair, Michalis Dimitrakopoulos, told the Associated Press he expects a verdict by March 17.

* IOC MEMBER and pole vault great Sergey Bubka has pledged to question Great Britain's rule barring doping offenders from ever representing their country at the Olympics. Three top British track and field athletes--vaulter Janine Whitlock, sprinter Dwaine Chambers and shotputter Carl Myerscough--fall in this category. Whitlock and Myerscough unsuccessfully appealed the rule and Chambers, involved in the BALCO scandal, is unlikely to ever be reinstated.

* INDIA is establishing a national anti-doping agency.

* A LIFE-SIZED bronze sculpture of Roger Bannister is en route from Nevada to Great Britain, and currently on display in Boulder, Colorado next to the Boulder Daily Camera newspaper offices. Finnish sculptor Eino, who goes by his first name only, calls the statue "Paradigm" and will ship it to a permanent home at London's Crystal Palace in three to six months times, reports BoulderRunning.com.

* ORGANIZERS of the London Marathon are offering almost $5 million over 10 years to maintain the viability of an Olympic Stadium after the 2012 Olympics, should they be awarded to London. "The London Marathon and London 2012 have signed an agreement that the facilities must be run after the Games by a not-for-profit organization prepared to make the facilities available to the public," reports scotsman.com. "They also stipulate that the Olympic stadium must retain a running track capable of hosting international events."

EYES ON THE GOLD

THE USOC is trimming 40 jobs from its payroll and is promising 84 percent of its 2005 budget will go towards grooming U.S. medal hopefuls.

"In recent years, the USOC has been criticized for not spending enough of its budget--more than $100 million a year--on Olympic athletes," writes Bill Briggs of the Denver Post. "In the past, athletes received about 80 percent of the funding."

The USOC projects $116.7 million in expenses this year, with $98.3 allotted to athlete training and support. The organization expects a $23.9 million deficit, "common in a non-Olympic year when TV revenues are dormant," reports Briggs.

USA Triathlon, displeased that USOC moneys are so strictly aimed at the elite rather than grass roots participation, will consider a resolution this month to withdraw from the USOC.

"The USOC's overriding charge is to win Olympic medals," writes Alan Abrahamson of the Los Angeles Times. "...But its charter also mandates that it help promote health and well-being through sport."

The USOC contributes $550,000 to support about 200 elite triathletes and expected USA Triathlon to do the same. USAT, which was "created in the early 1980s by race directors, for race directors," according to the Times, wants to keep its $550,000 to support its 50,000 members who participate in the 1400-some U.S. triathlons each year. The organization is well-heeled compared to most Olympic sports federations. Its revenues for 2005 are projected to be $5.5 million.

(USA Track & Field sanctions more than 4,000 events a year and has a membership of 100,000 and revenues of around $15.5 million last year.)

"The rift is being watched closely by other Olympic insiders, in part because some have long bristled at what they view as unwarranted USOC interference in the development and training of championship athletes," writes Abra

h a m s o n .