Columnist Dean Juipe: Designer drugs keep testers and leagues in hot pursuit

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2003 | 9:51 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

It's a war that may never be won, and, some would say, shouldn't even be fought.

It's costly and time consuming and the rewards are minimal, if evident at all.

The battlefield is wherever sports are contested, particularly at an elite level. The ammunition is designer drugs. The adversaries are those who compete in sports vs. those who try to prevent an athlete from having an unfair advantage.

The skirmishes never end and sometimes go public, as has been the case in recent days with the revelation that a steroid derivative that goes by the acronym THG has turned up in the urine samples of a number of famous athletes and that a federal grand jury will intervene. This comes hot on the heels of the public discovery of ZMA, which showed up in the samples of still another batch of world-class athletes.

"This goes back to what I told the U.S. Olympic Committee years ago: if (pharmaceutical) analysts had enough financial support to do research on what they're seeing, they might be able to get a handle on these things," Dr. Robert Voy of Las Vegas said Tuesday. "But, without the support and with the way it is today, it's a game of cops and robbers and the robbers will always win."

Voy is an expert on drug testing and research and one of the world's best-known analysts of the subject. He's the author of a book, "Drugs, Sport & Politics," that pried deep into the inner workings of the trade, and he has also been the Deputy Chairman of the U.S. Olympic Medical Committee, as well as a President of USA Boxing.

Naturally, he favors an aggressive approach to testing.

But realistically, he knows there are times when it seems absolutely futile.

"THG wouldn't have become (publicly) known if somebody hadn't squealed by offering an analyst a sample," he said. "There will always be something else, something new, out there.

"There's an argument that says if we can't stay ahead (of the development of new drugs) we should back off and let the athletes take whatever they want. My problem with that as a physician is that these drugs are harmful in the end and that the athletes that are taking them are doing themselves a disservice.

"Maybe not at their moment of glory, but most of these athletes will live to regret it."

One such drug, androstenedione (or "andro" as it has become known), surfaced as Mark McGwire was in the process of hitting 70 home runs for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1998. But andro has since been called "passe" and neither the U.S. Congress nor most sports leagues have taken any steps to ban it despite a lengthy list of medical concerns.

The fates of THG and ZMA are apt to be determined by the zealousness and results of the federal grand jury investigation; a congressman is also pushing for the Federal Drug Administration to have greater influence in the legal standing of these and similar drugs.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency is involved with the THG inquiry and it identified at least four American athletes who have tested positive for the drug, including national shot put champion Kevin Toth and U.S. 1,500-meter record holder Regina Jacobs. European 100-meter champion Dwain Chambers has also tested positive for THG.

Federal investigators also asked the Nevada State Athletic Commission for the recent urine sample of junior middleweight world champion Shane Mosley, who defeated Oscar De La Hoya here in September, but the sample had since been destroyed.

Two highly prominent baseball players, Jason Giambi of the Yankees and Barry Bonds of the Giants, have also been called to testify before the grand jury. Make of that what you will.

THG has been developed in a Burlingame, Calif., laboratory run by a man named Victor Conte. He was also involved in the marketing, if not development, of ZMA, a zinc and magnesium supplement that emerged in 1999 and has brought Conte's company a reported $10 million in sales to date; copycat compounds are said to have $90 million in sales during the same time frame.

The idea with all supplements that are being developed by nutritional companies is to provide the athlete with greater endurance and a more chiseled look with fewer side effects. In the development of these supplements, substances that were once deemed harmless can later be classified as illegal.

Zinc may come to be an example. Conte, for one, discovered that zinc boosts testosterone levels (promoting muscle growth and healing) if taken immediately before going to sleep.

New clients ran to his doorstep as he created new concoctions and marketed them in specialty magazines and via word of mouth.

Testers are now scrambling to retest athletes and retest older urine samples, although it is believed that many pro leagues -- and as also is the case with the NSAC -- destroy the samples after a short period of time. But the National Football League says it will retest samples it has kept, and athletes involved in Olympic sports have their urine samples kept for several years -- hence, they are more likely than most athletes to be singled out as offenders.

The International Association of Athletics Federations said Tuesday that it is considering doubling its ban on athletes caught with illegal substances from its current two years to a four-year penalty.

"Call me a purist, but part of my appreciation for sports hinges on there being a level playing field," Voy said. "Athletes are pretty similar at the elite level and if all it takes to have a little edge (is taking a new, unlegislated supplement) then it's going to continue happening.

"Olympic and pro sports have to allow the analysts to stay ahead of the curve. Sports have turned their heads to a degree on this issue and the only solution is to require a whole lot more financial support and testing than we do today."

Failing that -- and it appears as if sports have failed thus far and may continue to fail at it for some time -- stories about new designer drugs will inevitably appear at assorted intervals in the future. The cops in his cops vs. robbers scenario are underfunded and overworked, and it seems unlikely they will ever have all the culprits in their figurative jail.

But, as Voy says, it is worth trying and the need and desire for a level playing field all but requires a greater effort in this specialized are.