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It's the Knock All Olympians Dread
Random Drug Testers Call At Inopportune Moments; Paper Cups, Ruined Dates
By PETER WALDMAN, Staff Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
ATHENS -- Swimmer Gary Hall Jr. was hosting a British lord for dinner.
Volleyball player Tom Hoff was negotiating a business contract.
And Jarred Rome, a discus thrower, was fast asleep at dawn before a big meet. "You know that feeling when you open your eyes and somebody's standing over you?" says the 300-pound hurler. "I about floored the guy."
Instead, Mr. Rome did what fellow U.S. Olympians Hall and Hoff and hundreds of other elite athletes have done in similar predicaments: He led the uninvited guests into the bathroom and urinated into a paper cup while they watched. "It's always strange when the guy's staring right at you," says Aaron Peirsol, who scooped up his second backstroke gold medal last night.
No athlete wants to get busted cheating with drugs. Yet staying clean has its own humiliations. Either way, everyone gets caught with their pants down.
Sports federations in many countries, including the U.S., now require athletes to submit to surprise, year-round drug testing to compete. For many American athletes, that means filing notice of their daily whereabouts for three months in advance with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Evading "drug-control officers," as the sample-gatherers are called, or refusing to provide a specimen on demand, can lead to suspension from competition.
Unpleasant Surprises
Cooperating with the drug testers, though, can lead to other indignities.
Mr. Hall, a favorite for a gold medal in the 50-meter freestyle race today, was eating dinner recently in his Florida home with the visiting lord and some other British dignitaries when the doorbell rang. His wife was serving her specialty; they'd uncorked a fine bottle of Pinot Noir.
The drug testers were friendly but insistent. "They set down their paraphernalia on the table next to the Cornish game hen," Mr. Hall recalls. The testers lingered at the candlelit table for a half-hour or so, bantering with guests about real estate, as Mr. Hall guzzled several glasses of water.
"Any time people are waiting around for you to pee in a cup, it's awkward," the swimmer says.
Mr. Hoff, the volleyballer, was in a meeting in Greece, negotiating a contract to play professional ball. He wasn't surprised when the drug samplers appeared; they had roused his sleeping family -- "the dogs go crazy, the kids cry" -- a half-dozen times with early-morning visits over the previous year, he says. But he was angry.
"If I were a businessman in a meeting like that," says Mr. Hoff, "I guarantee you they'd never barge in. As an Olympic athlete, these people have the power to drag me out of anything."
No-notice testing -- any place, any time -- is the only way to deter and detect drug cheating, says Rune Andersen, director of standards and testing for the World Anti-Doping Agency, the lead antidrug body for international sports. He says most drug testers do their best to find athletes at their training facilities, and track them down at home or elsewhere only when that isn't possible. "Knocking on an athlete's door is a last resort," he says. "That's the price top athletes sometimes have to pay."
The element of surprise is crucial, Mr. Andersen says, because determined cheaters, if given as little as six hours' notice before a test, have many ways to mask their drug use. That's why International Olympic Committee officials were so alarmed when Greece's top two sprinters, Costas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou, missed a surprise drug test on the eve of the Games, and then claimed to have been hospitalized for a motorcycle accident.
They offered to have their urine tested in the hospital, but the IOC declined, cognizant of the many ways to purge banned substances with drugs and catheters. At an IOC hearing Wednesday, both Greek sprinters, while professing innocence, withdrew from the Games and apologized to their crestfallen countrymen.
The fight against drug cheaters is a battle of cat and mouse, says Mr. Andersen, who spent 15 years in the field gathering specimens before becoming an administrator. Some gyms post watchmen, with intricate signaling systems using flags and radios, to alert athletes to arriving drug testers, he says. And athletes themselves are resorting to bizarre and intricate methods of evasion.
During one unannounced test of an Iranian weightlifter in Norway, Mr. Andersen noticed the man's upper body shifting unusually. The specimen he produced felt suspiciously cool as well. So Mr. Andersen demanded the Iranian remove his shirt and produce a second sample.
The weightlifter refused, claiming his religion forbids nudity. When he finally relented, he tested positive for anabolic steroids and was banned from competition for three years. It turned out his first negative sample had come from a balloon lodged in the man's armpit, with a tube running down his arm to fill the paper cup.
'It Has Come to This'
Indeed, Mr. Andersen says informants in gyms around the world tell him some athletes are now experimenting with balloons of untainted urine hidden in orifices below the waist. "It's very unfortunate it has come to this," he says, "but we may have to ask for mirrors during tests so we can see all the angles."
This is disconcerting news for some athletes who say there are already privacy issues aplenty. U.S. swim star Jenny Thompson has dealt with drug testers while walking out the door with a date. She also found them waiting in her apartment after returning from taking her medical boards at Columbia University, where she's a medical student.
Swimmer Natalie Coughlin, gold medalist in the 100-meter backstroke Monday and a member of the team Wednesday that set a world record in the 4x200-meter freestyle relay, was working on a take-home final exam at the University of California at Berkeley, when the testers knocked. Nature had just called, so the intruders made themselves comfortable, she says.
"There I was, trying to write an essay on the political ecology of the Third World, with these two drug testers chatting away in my living room," she says. "It was really irritating."
For track diva Marion Jones, winner of five medals in Sydney whose appearance here has been clouded in a drug scandal, the idea of mirrors is more than disconcerting. Ms. Jones, who will participate in the long jump and perhaps other events, denies she's ever used drugs. "Our privacy is definitely questioned when you have to go into your doping test, take everything off and turn around," she says. "In some countries, there's somebody sitting across from me who barely speaks English."
It's the Knock All Olympians Dread
Random Drug Testers Call At Inopportune Moments; Paper Cups, Ruined Dates
By PETER WALDMAN, Staff Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
ATHENS -- Swimmer Gary Hall Jr. was hosting a British lord for dinner.
Volleyball player Tom Hoff was negotiating a business contract.
And Jarred Rome, a discus thrower, was fast asleep at dawn before a big meet. "You know that feeling when you open your eyes and somebody's standing over you?" says the 300-pound hurler. "I about floored the guy."
Instead, Mr. Rome did what fellow U.S. Olympians Hall and Hoff and hundreds of other elite athletes have done in similar predicaments: He led the uninvited guests into the bathroom and urinated into a paper cup while they watched. "It's always strange when the guy's staring right at you," says Aaron Peirsol, who scooped up his second backstroke gold medal last night.
No athlete wants to get busted cheating with drugs. Yet staying clean has its own humiliations. Either way, everyone gets caught with their pants down.
Sports federations in many countries, including the U.S., now require athletes to submit to surprise, year-round drug testing to compete. For many American athletes, that means filing notice of their daily whereabouts for three months in advance with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Evading "drug-control officers," as the sample-gatherers are called, or refusing to provide a specimen on demand, can lead to suspension from competition.
Unpleasant Surprises
Cooperating with the drug testers, though, can lead to other indignities.
Mr. Hall, a favorite for a gold medal in the 50-meter freestyle race today, was eating dinner recently in his Florida home with the visiting lord and some other British dignitaries when the doorbell rang. His wife was serving her specialty; they'd uncorked a fine bottle of Pinot Noir.
The drug testers were friendly but insistent. "They set down their paraphernalia on the table next to the Cornish game hen," Mr. Hall recalls. The testers lingered at the candlelit table for a half-hour or so, bantering with guests about real estate, as Mr. Hall guzzled several glasses of water.
"Any time people are waiting around for you to pee in a cup, it's awkward," the swimmer says.
Mr. Hoff, the volleyballer, was in a meeting in Greece, negotiating a contract to play professional ball. He wasn't surprised when the drug samplers appeared; they had roused his sleeping family -- "the dogs go crazy, the kids cry" -- a half-dozen times with early-morning visits over the previous year, he says. But he was angry.
"If I were a businessman in a meeting like that," says Mr. Hoff, "I guarantee you they'd never barge in. As an Olympic athlete, these people have the power to drag me out of anything."
No-notice testing -- any place, any time -- is the only way to deter and detect drug cheating, says Rune Andersen, director of standards and testing for the World Anti-Doping Agency, the lead antidrug body for international sports. He says most drug testers do their best to find athletes at their training facilities, and track them down at home or elsewhere only when that isn't possible. "Knocking on an athlete's door is a last resort," he says. "That's the price top athletes sometimes have to pay."
The element of surprise is crucial, Mr. Andersen says, because determined cheaters, if given as little as six hours' notice before a test, have many ways to mask their drug use. That's why International Olympic Committee officials were so alarmed when Greece's top two sprinters, Costas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou, missed a surprise drug test on the eve of the Games, and then claimed to have been hospitalized for a motorcycle accident.
They offered to have their urine tested in the hospital, but the IOC declined, cognizant of the many ways to purge banned substances with drugs and catheters. At an IOC hearing Wednesday, both Greek sprinters, while professing innocence, withdrew from the Games and apologized to their crestfallen countrymen.
The fight against drug cheaters is a battle of cat and mouse, says Mr. Andersen, who spent 15 years in the field gathering specimens before becoming an administrator. Some gyms post watchmen, with intricate signaling systems using flags and radios, to alert athletes to arriving drug testers, he says. And athletes themselves are resorting to bizarre and intricate methods of evasion.
During one unannounced test of an Iranian weightlifter in Norway, Mr. Andersen noticed the man's upper body shifting unusually. The specimen he produced felt suspiciously cool as well. So Mr. Andersen demanded the Iranian remove his shirt and produce a second sample.
The weightlifter refused, claiming his religion forbids nudity. When he finally relented, he tested positive for anabolic steroids and was banned from competition for three years. It turned out his first negative sample had come from a balloon lodged in the man's armpit, with a tube running down his arm to fill the paper cup.
'It Has Come to This'
Indeed, Mr. Andersen says informants in gyms around the world tell him some athletes are now experimenting with balloons of untainted urine hidden in orifices below the waist. "It's very unfortunate it has come to this," he says, "but we may have to ask for mirrors during tests so we can see all the angles."
This is disconcerting news for some athletes who say there are already privacy issues aplenty. U.S. swim star Jenny Thompson has dealt with drug testers while walking out the door with a date. She also found them waiting in her apartment after returning from taking her medical boards at Columbia University, where she's a medical student.
Swimmer Natalie Coughlin, gold medalist in the 100-meter backstroke Monday and a member of the team Wednesday that set a world record in the 4x200-meter freestyle relay, was working on a take-home final exam at the University of California at Berkeley, when the testers knocked. Nature had just called, so the intruders made themselves comfortable, she says.
"There I was, trying to write an essay on the political ecology of the Third World, with these two drug testers chatting away in my living room," she says. "It was really irritating."
For track diva Marion Jones, winner of five medals in Sydney whose appearance here has been clouded in a drug scandal, the idea of mirrors is more than disconcerting. Ms. Jones, who will participate in the long jump and perhaps other events, denies she's ever used drugs. "Our privacy is definitely questioned when you have to go into your doping test, take everything off and turn around," she says. "In some countries, there's somebody sitting across from me who barely speaks English."
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