World Athletics Championships: Greene questions test programme

THE CRISIS of confidence in the drug-testing programme underpinning the world athletics movement came into sharp and embarrassing focus here yesterday on the eve of the seventh IAAF World Championships as three of the highest profile competitors admitted they did not trust its efficiency.

In the wake of the recent positive findings involving athletes such as Linford Christie, Javier Sotomayor and Merlene Ottey, America's three brightest gold medal prospects - the world 100m champions Maurice Greene and Marion Jones, and Olympic 200m and 400m champion Michael Johnson - expressed grave doubts over the testing procedures.

"Having so many sudden cases of positive tests, I don't think I'm 100 per cent sure that it is the correct testing procedure," said Jones. "To say `yes', I would be lying."

Greene called for the installation of blood testing to help correct the current atmosphere of uncertainty, while Johnson was more succinct. "I have confidence in God and my parents," he said. "That's about the extent I have confidence in."

Jones, who will seek to win four gold medals here, reacted with dismay to the news that Ottey, who would have been one of her main sprint rivals had she not been obliged to withdraw from the championships, had tested positive at the age of 39. "Along with many other athletes last night when I saw the story on TV I was shocked," she said.

As athletes begin to ask more questions of the dope-testing procedure, and particularly the spate of positive findings involving nandrolone, the IAAF is maintaining their hard line on the imposition of bans. Professor Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the IAAF doping commission, spelt out the federation's position once again at the IAAF Congress yesterday after a US motion seeking to amend the rules to ensure confidentiality for athletes facing disciplinary hearings was rejected. Ljungqvist reiterated the guiding principle of strict liability operated by both the International Olympic Committee and the IAAF, whereby if a banned substance is found in an athlete's sample, the athlete is deemed culpable, whether or not they can explain how it got there.

The IAAF stance means the prospects are bleak for British athletes such as Doug Walker, who must face an IAAF arbitration panel following the Federation's judgement that he has been erroneously cleared of wrongdoing by a UK panel following his adverse finding of nandrolone metabolites. Should fellow Britons Linford Christie and Gary Cadogan - who also face UK disciplinary hearings following positive nandrolone findings - be cleared as well by their domestic federation, their prospects will be no brighter.

Dave Moorcroft, the chief executive of UK Athletics, made a forceful speech to the IAAF Congress yesterday pointing out the injustice of applying the strict liability principle. "The current process is just a cop-out," he said. "It goes against natural justice. It means you don't have to think about the issue of intent, even if something happens to an athlete that is totally out of their control or beyond their knowledge."

Walker was cleared by the UK disciplinary committee because the metabolites of nandrolone - effectively fingerprints of a substance processed by the kidneys - could have come from three sources, only one of which was the banned steroid itself. The other two, the committee found, could not be shown to be either chemically or pharmacologically related to the banned steroid.

Ljungqvist, however, countered this argument yesterday when he expressed doubts over the finding. "We have a problem with the phrase `chemically or pharmacologically related'," he said. "It is in our rules to cover new drugs which come on the market which may be very similar to substances which are already on our banned list, because we cannot name every possible substance. We have already experienced legal problems with this distinction in a German case."

Walker's result, it is widely believed within UK Athletics, occurred because supplements innocent in themselves combined within his body to create high nandrolone readings. Ljungqvist, however, questioned why athletes needed to take any supplements at all.

This Wednesday, Moorcroft and the UK Athletics president David Hemery will seek the support of the IAAF Foundation, a charitable and very wealthy offshoot of the federation, to donate funds towards research work into nandrolone and other substances such as EPO. "It won't be mega millions, but we would be hoping for a sum of around $100,000 to be put in," said Hemery. "That would send a message."

Meanwhile UK Sport, prompted by the Minister for Sport, Kate Hoey, is establishing a research project into nandrolone findings which will involve 25 British scientists. Moorcroft has received assurances from the IAAF that the results will be studied carefully. Whether they would accept a finding that their nandrolone testing had been erroneous, however, was something which concerned Moorcroft. "It might create more questions than many people would wish to answer," he said.