IOC May Retest Salt Lake Samples

The International Olympic Committee is looking into whether drug tests at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics can be rechecked for the recently discovered steroid THG, IOC medical director Patrick Schamasch said Wednesday.

Lawyers for the IOC are studying the legality of retroactive testing of frozen urine samples taken to Los Angeles from the temporary Olympic drug-testing laboratory at the University of Utah's Research Park.

"The samples exist. Now we have to look into all the juridical [legal] issues," Schamasch said in a telephone interview from IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.

"We are reviewing all these different issues, of course. Once we have all the information on the potential legal issues, my proposal will be to ask our president (Jacques Rogge), and he will decide."

The Food and Drug Administration Tuesday warned that the newly unmasked steroid causing a furor in athletics is an illegal drug, not a dietary supplement, and poses some serious health risks to people who use it.

U.S. drug authorities first learned about the steroid, called THG, this summer after an anonymous tip. It apparently was designed specifically to be undetectable by the standard test given to athletes.

Europe's fastest man — 100-meter champion Dwain Chambers of Britain — has admitted taking it, and dozens of top Olympic and professional athletes have been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury probing a California lab that sold alleged nutritional supplements.

The IOC is asking scientists if the frozen 19-month-old samples are viable.

"We want to be sure that the quality of the sample is still good in order not to face any legal issue with a potential degradation," Schamasch said. "It's a very sensitive issue.

"It's not a simple process for a long-term storage sample. It's easier when you have to go into an event which took place three or four months ago. When you have to go to an event that took place almost two years ago, it's more complicated."

Don Catlin, who heads the Olympic drug-testing laboratory at UCLA, where the samples are stored, told the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper that 200 to 300 samples still exist and could be retested for the previously undetectable drug.

Catlin, whose lab performed the drug testing at the Salt Lake Olympics, developed a test for THG after an unidentified track coach sent a syringe of the substance to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency

On Friday, the World Anti-Doping Agency urged retesting of all stored samples worldwide. Track and field already planned to retest 400 samples from the world championships in Paris in August.

The IOC's doping rules only require drug-testers to keep backup samples of positive tests for 90 days while backups of negative tests must be kept for 30 days.

Catlin errs on the side of caution.

"We still have samples from the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics," he told the newspaper. "Shall we test those for THG?"

Anabolic steroids are synthetic versions of the male hormone testosterone. Some are approved by the FDA to sell, by prescription only, to treat certain muscle-wasting diseases. But athletes use them illegally to bulk up.

Anabolic steroids can have dangerous side effects, including liver damage, heart disease, anxiety and rage. While little is known about THG's specific effects because it is so new, it likely poses similar risks, Taylor said.

THG actually was derived by some simple chemical modifications of two well-known — and athletically banned — synthetic steroids, called trenbolone and gestrinone, said FDA Associate Commissioner John Taylor.

Tuesday, the FDA finished its own testing of this newest steroid and formally declared THG a drug that would require its permission to sell in this country — making any use at this time illegal.