USA Track and Field officials will consider tougher penalties for doping positives, including a lifetime ban for steroid users, at the group’s 25th annual meeting in North Carolina, starting on Wednesday.
The gathering comes in the wake of USA Track and Field chief executive Craig Masback’s October call for a ”zero tolerance” anti-doping punishment plan in the wake of the scandal over the ”designer steroid” tetrahydrogestrinone (THG).
”It’s something we will strongly urge our organisation to adopt,” Masback said. ”We want to send the message that if you cheat, your career is over.”
But that tough talk from six weeks ago, which eased pressure from the United States Olympic Committee (Usoc) about possible decertification of USA Track and Field as a governing body, might not produce results as fast as expected.
A meeting agenda on the US governing body’s website indicated USA Track and Field president Bill Roe intends to table a motion on tougher doping penalties for lack of answers to key questions, including if USA Track penalties can be tougher than those of the global governing body.
That body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, punishes anabolic steroid doping cases with two-year international bans.
”USA Track and Field and our entire sport are under a cloud of suspicion,” Roe said in October. ”We look at this as an opportunity to move anti-doping levels to those unmatched in the sport.”
Given the doping devastation inflicted on US athletes since October’s revelation of previously undetectable THG, there will be pressure on USA Track officials to do something meaningful in terms of punishing dopers.
Four THG positives were found in US athletes from out-of-competition tests and June’s US championships.
British sprinter Dwain Chambers and three Americans — runner Regina Jacobs, hammer thrower John McEwen and shot-putter Kevin Toth — have been identified as testing positive for THG with another positive athlete not yet known publicly.
”Athletes were strongly behind the generation of this program,” Masback said. ”They can no longer allow the handful of athletes who cheat to ruin their reputations.”
Usoc officials formed an advisory panel to work with USA Track and Field on anti-doping measures, with Usoc chief executive Jim Scheer saying at the time that ”the integrity of Track and Field in America is at stake”.
US marathoner Deena Drossin Kastor has been among the most outspoken critics of doping positives. She bested Jacobs and Kelli White, a double world champion sprinter who tested positive for modafinil, to be named the top US women’s athlete of 2003.
”Any time there is fame and money involved in any profession, you will see a certain type of person cheat to get there,” Drossin said. ”As long as a handful of us can do it the right way without cheating, I think good things will come our way.”
John Smith, coach of Olympic sprint champion Maurice Greene, said steroid positives should be hit with a four-year ban.
”When someone deliberately takes something that is illegal — an enhancement, an anabolic — two years is not long enough,” Smith said.
The US Anti-Doping Agency has accused Balco Laboratories and California nutritionist Victor Conte of developing THG, which was undetected until an unidentified coach sent anti-doping detectors a sample of the substance.
Since then, four American football players reportedly tested positive for THG and a federal grand jury in San Francisco has seen a host of top sports figures testify in hearings as part of the probe of Balco.
US Olympic champion swimmer Amy van Dyken and athletics star Marion Jones were among those who have testified. Baseball star Barry Bonds is set to testify later this week.
THG testing has become a major topic for American sports leagues since its discovery. National Football League players face multi-game suspensions for steroid violations uncovered through a random testing programme.
Major League Baseball, which faces credibility concerns over supplements in the wake of record seasons for home runs in recent years, will impose steroid testing in the next two seasons after 5% to 7% percent of players tested positive for steroids this season in tests.
Baseball’s penalties, agreed on in a deal with the players union, provide only treatment and education programmes for first-time steroid users and gradual penalties up to a one-year ban without pay or a $100 000 fine.
Critics ridicule the plan as too lenient while baseball officials point to US union worker rights laws and note that suspensions with no pay of 25 to 50 days for repeat offenses could cost some players millions of dollars. — Sapa-AFP