Questions of substance

Claims cast suspicion on USOC's drug policy enforcement

For the current issue of Sports Illustrated, associate editor Don Yaeger and I wrote a story about the United States Olympic Committee's drug testing program. The primary facts of the story were culled from more than 30,000 pages of documents provided to SI -- and later to other media outlets -- by former USOC drug czar Dr. Wade Exum .

Exum ran the USOC's drug-testing program from 1991 until his resignation in June 2000. Upon leaving, Exum sued the USOC, claiming racial discrimination (Exum is black). His case was dismissed in the first week of April. Yet during the course of his nearly three-year public campaign against the USOC, Exum often railed against the USOC's drug-testing system, claiming that the USOC did little to stanch the use of performance-enhancing drugs and that the committee even tacitly encouraged it. He threatened to back up his claims by releasing documents from his tenure.

His threats of exposure have kept the international media salivating. Last June The Times of London called the prospect of Exum naming names "the biggest drugs-in-sport story of all time."

It's not exactly that, but it is mighty interesting. In the SI story, Yaeger and I revealed that included among Exum's documents were more than 100 positive drug tests for U.S. athletes from 1988 to 2000 and that, in many cases, the athletes were not prevented from competing. Among the athletes who tested positive were nine-time Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis , arguably the greatest Olympic athlete in history, and fellow '88 gold medalists Joe DeLoach and Andre Phillips .

All three of these athletes -- and the vast majority of those named in Exum's papers -- tested positive for stimulants found in over-the-counter cold medicines. Most were cleared after explaining that they had taken the substances inadvertently.

The SI story did not pass judgment on whether any of the athletes were attempting to circumvent USOC or International Olympic Committee drug policies. Nor will this column attempt to do so. It is, of course, impossible to know an athlete's motivation for what he/she puts into his/her body. What the story stated was simply this: More than 100 athletes tested positive, many were not sanctioned. That's what the documents said; that's what we wrote.

It is possible that many people will see this information and conclude that the USOC and IOC are behaving ludicrously, attempting to suspend athletes for taking cold medicine. They will ignore the fact that even a small amount of a stimulant can enhance performance. After all, most fans didn't give a whit that Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris ' home run record while gobbling androstenedione, a supplement that is banned by by the NFL, the NCAA and the IOC because it may act like a steroid.

It is also possible that the international media -- and many foreign Olympic officials -- will see the Exum papers as confirmation that the U.S. cheats. The fact remains that "inadvertent" use is not an acceptable excuse for using banned substances and never has been. Many athletes have lost medals -- and the opportunity to compete for medals -- because they took over-the-counter medication that turned out to be banned.

There's no question that this system is deeply flawed. There's no question that international doping control is a mess; cheaters remain far ahead of the posse. There is too much gray area regarding exactly how much of a banned substance constitutes a positive test.

However -- and this is a big however -- many in the Olympic community are going to assume that the U.S. has been ignoring and bending the rules in order to win gold medals, doing precisely what it accused the Eastern Bloc of doing during Cold War Olympics. That could be the legacy of the Exum papers.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden is a regular contributor to SI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.

 

Related information

Stories

Tim Layden's Insider Archive

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video