US Olympic athletes reportedly tested less frequently than other ...

Rising snowboard star Chad Otterstrom was banned for two years after he tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug - the second time he has failed a test in three years.

U.S. Anti-Doping Agency officials used Otterstrom last week as an example of its get-tough policy on athletes using drugs.

Problem is, Otterstrom, 26, had been taking the stimulant and competing for a decade, ranking among the best in Snowboarder magazine and even landing a spot in a Sony PlayStation video game. The laid-back Colorado boarder says he never worried about getting busted because he was rarely tested - just the two times.

The drug police caught up with Otterstrom, but it took 10 years to do it.

U.S. sporting officials say their drug-testing program is a model for the world. They point out that they have increased the number of drug tests the past three years and plan to do even more.

Still, it has been easy for athletes to play the odds - and usually win.

An Orange County Register investigation found that athletes are tested far less frequently in the United States than in other countries. And testing has been uneven - virtually ignoring thousands of athletes, including some of the nation's best.

The investigation found:

Athletes, previously under the U.S. Olympic Committee and now under the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, can have long, successful careers while being tested infrequently, if ever. At least 15,000 serious, national-level athletes compete in the United States, based on a Register survey of every sport federation in the country. The Anti-Doping Agency tested about 4,700 athletes from late 2000 through 2002, most of them just once.

Experts agree the best way to catch cheaters is through surprise testing outside of competitions and that a model program would have at least 70 percent of its tests given without notice. Less than 40 percent of the Anti-Doping Agency's tests have been given without notice. And some sports have no surprise testing.

The new testing agency is missing some of the best athletes. Sixty-six American athletes won medals at the 2001 World Championships in the highest-profile Olympic sports - track and field, swimming, gymnastics and figure skating. Of those medalists, only 14 had undergone surprise testing by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in the crucial training months leading to the events.

Many U.S. federations do not acknowledge drug use in their sport - even 15 years after Ben Johnson opened the world's eyes to the power of drugs with his steroid-fueled performance at the 1988 Olympics.

The U.S. agency says it has focused its drug-testing program on athletes who are most likely to represent the country in the Olympics.

But critics question just how committed the U.S. Olympic Committee, and the country's sport federations, are to ending the use of performance-enhancing substances. They point out that limiting the testing pool means thousands of athletes are seldom, if ever, tested.

"There's this illusion that they're doing something about doping in sports because they say they're testing more frequently, and now it turns out they're not even doing that very well," said Dr. Charles Yesalis, a doping expert at Penn State who has long advocated for better testing methods. "Every five years it seems they acknowledge a problem and say that they've fixed it. Well, they haven't fixed it. They haven't even built a very convincing facade."

Others credit the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency with making significant improvements. Athletes caught doping, for example, are now publicly penalized.

"I don't think there is any doubt that the entrance of USADA has been a quantum leap forward for anti-doping in the States," said Graeme Steel, executive director of the New Zealand Sports Drug Agency.

The Register reported in April that from 1988-2000, the U.S. Olympic Committee and national sport federations allowed more than 100 athletes had been allowed to go on and compete after being caught with banned drugs in their systems. The U.S. Olympic Committee responded by saying it did nothing wrong.

The International Olympic Committee has said that it might ask for an independent investigation into the way drug testing has been handled in the United States when the committee meets this week in Madrid.

The Register's most recent findings - culled from documents and an analysis of records of more than 4,000 athletes tested under the new anti-doping program - show that U.S. anti-drug efforts are still underfunded and inadequate.

A NEW START

Since drug testing began in 1968, the U.S. Olympic Committee and each sport's national federation have been responsible for testing and sanctioning athletes.

The sport federations, which hold competitions and administer rules for their own athletes, were caught between wanting clean competitors and wanting to win medals. That created potential conflicts of interest and prompted the U.S. Olympic Committee to shift drug policing to the new U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in October 2000. The Colorado Springs, Co.-based agency is run by Terry Madden, a former Dallas prosecutor who also worked as a top aide at the U.S. Olympic Committee.

"What we've done is a model for the rest of the world," Madden said.

When the new agency took over, some things changed. Inadvertent use was eliminated as an excuse for positive tests, and some drug levels were increased to allow athletes to use small amounts of over-the-counter cold medications and supplements.

The agency has to cover a lot of ground within a tight budget. In 2001, the Anti-Doping agency received $4.3 million from the federal government and $3.7 million from the U.S. Olympic Committee.

The agency spent $3.9 million on testing and sanctioning U.S. athletes in 2002 but concedes it is not enough.

"The government and the United States Olympic Committee have been very generous, but to run a great testing program we would need another $3 million to $4 million for testing every year," Madden said. He later added: "Norway is doing the same amount of tests as us, but about 90 percent of Norway's athletes are located within 50 miles of Oslo. I have a very, very large country with athletes in 46 states."

Critics of the system say the lack of money is part of the problem. The U.S. Olympic Committee, with revenues of $89 million in 2001, spends more on direct-mail marketing than it gives to the testing agency annually. It spends more than three times as much on fund raising.

"They have the money, but they're not putting it in the right place," said Dr. Robert Ruhling, director of the Human Performance Research Laboratory at George Mason University in Virginia. "The athletes and the people who work with them to beat the system are probably spending many times that much. The good guys are underfunded, and the bad guys spend a lot and get away with it."

ATHLETES RARELY TESTED

Nearly three years into the new agency's tenure, it is clear many top-level athletes still are not tested by the U.S. agency, a Register analysis shows. The agency in 2002 conducted about 5,200 tests - fewer than its maligned predecessor, the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Athletes can run, skate or wrestle in dozens of competitions and never have to provide a urine sample.

USA Water Polo, for example, which trains in Los Alamitos, says it has more than 30,000 athletes nationwide, 1,050 of whom compete at the elite level. But fewer than 50 elite athletes - 4.7 percent - were tested between late 2000 and the end of 2002.

The most recent survey by the Council of Europe Anti-Doping Convention showed that in 2001, Australia, Britain, Italy and Spain all had more drug testing than the United States Madden says his agency has divided the sports into categories reflecting how likely it is for athletes to use drugs: high, medium and low risk. He declined to disclose the sports in each group, but the numbers give a good indication. Five sports - weightlifting, track, swimming, speedskating and cycling - make up nearly half the tests. The other half is spread over 40 other sports.

Some of the most high-profile doping incidents in the past have occurred in sports where testing is still rare - hockey, wrestling and bobsledding, to name a few.

One of the most-talked-about drug cases at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, was that of 16-year-old Romanian gymnast Andreea Raducan. She was stripped of her gold medal after testing positive for pseudoephedrine, a stimulant found in a cold medication her doctor gave her.

"If I had taken the amount of pseudoephedrine that she had had, I could have done her routine," said Anita DeFrantz, the highest-ranking U.S. member of the International Olympic Committee. "And we banned the doctor, because he could have killed her."

Yet gymnastics, one of the largest and most popular sports, accounts for about 1 percent of all tests under the U.S. testing agency.

The sport has a history of spotty testing. USA Gymnastics did not have a single drug test in 1998 and just 27 in 1999, the year before the Sydney Olympics.

Kathy Kelly, head of women's gymnastics, said that until the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency took over, her group only tested athletes who were competing internationally.

"It was just a small portion," Kelly said. "We just (tested) so that there would be no problems if they went internationally."

The new agency has increased the number of tests for gymnasts but still misses many. Among the 73 athletes on the national and international junior and senior teams, about two-thirds weren't tested from late 2000 to the end of 2002.

With so few athletes being tested in most sports, it's no wonder snowboarder Otterstrom slid past drug testers for so many years.

Otterstrom told the Register that he had been taking Ritalin for attention deficit disorder since the ninth grade under a doctor's prescription. He said he no longer needs it but takes it out of habit.

"It's just Ritalin. They're trying to make me sound like a meth head because the doctor's term for it is methylphenidate. It sounds like methamphetamine," Otterstrom said. "You don't wake up in the morning, do meth and then go and do well in a snowboarding competition."

Methylphenidate is part of a banned group of stimulants, which are thought to boost energy and quicken reaction time, giving athletes an unfair advantage. Even athletes who have prescriptions are barred from taking a dose beyond the therapeutic level.

ATHLETES OUTWIT TESTS

Anti-doping experts say the only way to rid U.S. sports of drugs is to administer more surprise tests. Drug testers have to show up unannounced at athletes' homes or training facilities and require them to provide a urine sample on the spot, giving athletes no time to mask or dilute their urine.

"You can pass the drug test in almost any sport if you know what you're doing and you have time to prepare," said Robert Kersey, an athletic trainer and health professor at California State University, Fullerton.

During the last decade, the U.S. Olympic Committee found that when it gave athletes even a few hours notice before administering tests, athletes had time to drink whole pots of coffee and urinate repeatedly before testers arrived. U.S. Olympic Committee memos show that 50 percent to 60 percent of the urine samples collected in these short-notice tests were too diluted to give accurate results.

Athletes long have called for more surprise testing. In 1995, swimmer Jeff Rouse, an Olympic gold medalist, tapped into that sentiment with a petition drive. More than 500 athletes signed it.

"Those who want to continue gaining a performance advantage through use of drugs simply become more sophisticated at timing their drug use," the petition read. "An athlete training with anabolic steroids can work more intensely, longer and recover faster than an athlete who doesn't. That athlete can then stop the drug use just in time for it to go undetected at a competition. This affects competition results too frequently."

The petition changed nothing.

U.S. Olympic Committee records show that in 1998 there were no surprise tests of any figure skaters or skiers by U.S. drug testers leading up to the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

In the first three months of 2000, half the sports that would be taking part later that year in the Olympic Games in Sydney did not have a single surprise test. Ten sports - including diving, basketball and gymnastics - had no drug testing at all, according to previously undisclosed U.S. Olympic Committee documents.

Then in July, just weeks before the 2000 Sydney Games, the U.S. Olympic Committee shut down its surprise-testing program.

Shortly after the Sydney Games, the new U.S. Anti-Doping Agency took control. Although overall tests remain below the amount conducted by the U.S. Olympic Committee, the new agency has increased the number of surprise tests.

In 2001, 29 percent of the U.S. agency's drug tests were surprise. In 2002, it increased to 45 percent.

The World Anti-Doping Agency says there is not a one-size-fits-all policy for anti-doping programs, but a good guideline is to conduct surprise tests more than 70 percent of the time.

An analysis of test records shows that in high-profile sports like track and field, swimming and gymnastics, top stars still rarely face surprise tests by the U.S. agency leading up to major international events.

"It gives them some numbers to play with. They can say, `OK, look, we're doing a lot of tests,'" said Nikolay Durmanov, director of the Russian Olympic Anti-Doping Committee. "But it means nothing if the share of tests for out-of-competition is so very low."

In the 10 months leading up to the 2001 World Track and Field Championships, the anti-doping agency conducted 926 tests on U.S. track athletes. Of those tests, 20 percent were without warning.

Some of track's biggest names weren't given surprise tests by the U.S. agency: Maurice Greene and Tim Montgomery, the first- and second-place finishers in the 100 meters; and John Godina and Adam Nelson, first and second in the shot put. All of these star athletes passed drug tests at competitions.

Athletes can still be surprise-tested by international federations, but the U.S. agency doesn't coordinate or share testing schedules with these groups.

"The information exchange between us and the international federations is very weak right now," Madden said.

Three-time Olympic gold medalist Marion Jones was surprise-tested twice by the U.S. agency in the fall of 2000 but not again in the nine months before the world championships.

"We were a growing organization and we were getting our feet on the ground," Madden said about the 2001 tests. "But these testing numbers do not surprise me, nor am I disappointed in them. We are proud that we were growing at such a fast rate."

The following year, Greene was given two surprise tests by the U.S. agency. Jones was surprise-tested once.

The U.s. Anti-Doping Agency has a long way to go in some sports to reach the goal of 70 percent surprise tests. In baseball, for example, there were no surprise tests from October 2000 through 2002.

The fact that athletes were not surprise-tested by the United States does not mean they were taking drugs. But it does mean that authorities have less of a chance of catching cheaters.

"You have to decide: Is the purpose of our program to enable people to continue cheating or is the purpose to protect the people who aren't cheating?" said Richard Pound, a former vice president of the International Olympic Committee who now directs the World Anti-Doping Agency, the group that oversees drug testing at the Olympic Games.

Surprise tests are supposed to be just that, but some athletes say they have surmised the agency's schedule.

"I figured out pretty much what days they come on," said Oscar Chaplin III, rated third in U.S. weightlifting.

Chaplin should know about the process. He passed 32 drug tests between late 2000 and 2002, making him the second-most-tested athlete in the nation. In his sport, Chaplin and four other athletes accounted for 20 percent of the tests in that period.

"To me, it's a waste of time," he said. "I think they should spread around the tests more, and that would be way more effective. What about the other 300 people in the sport?"

Testing experts agree.

Arne Ljungqvist, chief anti-doping official for the International Association of Athletics Federations, said an effective testing program reaches all levels, not just elite athletes. His homeland Sweden - a fraction the size of the United States - gives 3,000 tests a year, compared with the U.S. agency's 5,200.

Dr. Linn Goldberg, who worked in drug testing for the U.S. Olympic Committee and now helps test athletes for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, suggested elite athletes like Chaplin and sprinter Marion Jones be tested twice a quarter out of competition. Those vying to be the next Chaplin or Jones should be tested at least twice a year, he said.

Young stars also are unlikely to get tested. Texas gymnast Carly Patterson, 15, has been billed as the next Mary Lou Retton. She and her teammate Holly Vise, also 15, have been competing in world-class events since 2001.

Vise won a pair of bronze medals in the 2001 Goodwill Games. Patterson is among the favorites for the all-around title at this August's World Championships in Anaheim. Neither Vise nor Patterson have ever been tested by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

WHAT DRUG PROBLEM?

One of the central ideas behind creating the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency was to eliminate the inherent conflict of interest sport federations had in training and drug testing their athletes. But the federations still have much power in deciding which athletes are tested. They submit the lists of athletes for testing. Many federations don't think they need to test widely or frequently. Officials for sports such as gymnastics, hockey and basketball consistently told the Register that drug use happens in other sports and in other countries.

"I don't know if our sport is just not conducive to that type of training, but we don't feel like we've ever had a major problem with drugs in hockey," said Doug Palazzari, head of USA Hockey.

Goldberg called Palazzari's assertion "ludicrous."

"Anyone who tells you, `We don't have a problem,' that's a joke," Goldberg said. "We just did a national study on them with a colleague of mine, and they're lying."

Goldberg surveyed college-age hockey players and found that 40 percent are using stimulants such as ephedrine and pseudoephedrine.

"They get pseudoephedrine from cold medicine. They call them little reds, because the pills are red, and they take them by the handful," said Goldberg's co-researcher, Dr. Robert Bents, a team doctor for the Air Force Academy hockey team in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Palazzari said he'd have to read Goldberg's study to comment on it, and added: "There are certain sports where drugs are going to make you bigger, stronger and faster. I think that drug testing for steroids is very important, but if you look at all the substances that are sold in Walgreens around the U.S. that would make you ineligible for the Olympics, they're not necessarily performance-enhancing drugs."