Wide range of drugs abused by elite athletes

Steroids, stimulants, hormones, blood boosters and even insulin have been combined in potentially life-threatening cocktails by elite track athletes, according to evidence collected by U.S. federal investigators.

The lengths to which athletes are prepared to go to gain the extra edge have been documented in chilling detail during the investigation into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO).

As a result, double world sprint champion Kelli White and former Olympic 4x400 relay gold medallist Alvin Harrison have been banned after admitting taking the designer steroid THG (tetrahydrogestrinone).

World 100 metres record holder Tim Montgomery, the partner of triple Olympic gold medallist Marion Jones, has been charged with serious doping violations and BALCO laboratory head Victor Conte said last week he had supplied Jones with THG and the blood booster EPO (erythropoietin).

"I cannot prove this in a court of law but I strongly believe that the large majority of Olympic records and world records established over the last half century have been drug-assisted," said U.S. researcher Charles Yesalis, in one of a series of interviews with doping experts conducted by Reuters.

"I've written for years that there are sports scientists who are sitting like vultures in trees, waiting as new medical discoveries come out of the factories."

The BALCO investigation started after Trevor Graham, Montgomery's and Jones's former coach, sent a syringe containing the previously undetectable THG to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in June last year.

White and Harrison subsequently confessed to taking an extraordinary mix of banned drugs. In addition to THG, the pair apparently used the blood booster EPO (erythropoietin), HGH (human growth hormone), the stimulant modafinil and insulin.

COMMON FACTOR

Don Catlin, the head of the Los Angeles Olympic Analytical Laboratory, which identified THG, believes BALCO is the common factor among the drugs.

"They (the athletes) would change around," he said. "They would change from one to another. One would be popular for a while and then they would shift to another one."

The drugs, said Catlin, included a substance colloquially known as "the cream", a mixture of testosterone and another hormone, epitesterone.

Testosterone, which increases muscle strength and bulk, is assumed to be artificially administered if the ratio with epitesterone is greater than six to one.

"These guys designed a cream that you could use, slather it on your arms, legs and chest and it had a ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone of around 20 to one," said Catlin.

"The average person has a one-to-one ratio. If that person takes testosterone and suddenly their testosterone goes from one to 100 and their epitestosterone goes from one to 100, the ratio is still one.