Scorecard

COMRADES

Not long ago it would have been folly to predict that Soviet medical personnel would come to the U.S. on a regular basis to test American Olympic hopefuls for illegal performance-enhancing drugs like anabolic steroids, and that U.S. doctors would travel to the U.S.S.R. for the same purpose. Yet last week in Moscow, U.S. Olympic Committee ( USOC) executive director Baaron Pittenger and Soviet sports committee deputy chairman Vasily Gromyko signed an agreement that—if ratified by the American and Soviet Olympic committees, as seems likely—will establish just such an arrangement.

The U.S.-Soviet agreement is a powerful antidrug statement, as is the international antidoping charter that was approved last week by sports officials from more than 100 nations attending a UNESCO conference in Moscow. But to suggest that either of the documents will eliminate the use of performance-enhancing drugs in Olympic sports would be, for the moment, folly. Consider just a few of the immediate obstacles:

?Logistics. They will take months to work out. For example, where will the athletes be tested? Soviet competitors train together at a small number of government-run sports centers, but American athletes are scattered all over the country, and many train alone. Which athletes will be considered of high enough caliber to test? How often will they be tested? When will the athletes be notified of the testing? "We're not talking about people in white coats knocking on athletes' doors in the middle of the night," says USOC president Robert Helmick. But if athletes have much advance warning, they may be able to get the drugs out of their systems.

?Civil liberties questions in the U.S. Last year athletes at Stanford successfully challenged the NCAA's drug-testing program in Santa Clara ( Calif.) County Superior Court, and a Suffolk County (Mass.) Superior Court struck down a Northeastern University plan to test its own athletes. The legality of testing for drugs in America may not be settled until a case reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, and that doesn't figure to be any time soon.

?Lack of enforcement powers. The antidoping charter, which was drafted last June at a conference sponsored by the International Olympic Committee, calls for worldwide testing of athletes with little or no notice. However, the charter is only a statement of principle. The IOC hopes that the sports officials who expressed support for the charter last week will persuade their governments to open their borders to IOC drug-testing teams, which would swoop in, unannounced, to test athletes. Don't be surprised if many countries—perhaps including the U.S.—refuse to cooperate.

The American-Soviet pact and the antidoping charter are well-intended expressions of concern. But can these efforts to render sports drug-free stand up to the realities of constitutional law, national sovereignty and scientific practice?

THE DARTH VADER LOOK

The season's hottest football accoutrement is the tinted plastic eye shield. At least 90 NFL players attach the $5-to-$25 inserts to the insides of their helmets to keep from getting poked in the eye and to cut down on glare. So do a growing number of high school and college players. "I sort of like the look, and people can't read your eyes as well," says Cincinnati Bengal cornerback Eric Thomas. "They also can't stick their fingers in your face mask."

The inventor of the football shield is Frank Pupello, the equipment manager for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Pupello fashioned the first one out of the visor of an auto-racing helmet in 1974 for a University of Tampa player who had been poked in the eye. But no one picked up on the idea until Pupello made a more advanced model for Hugh Green, then a Buc linebacker, in 1984. Green's shield sparked interest among players, and soon protective-eyewear manufacturers began producing the shields.