America at Large: It was somewhat predictable that when baseball's World Series moved to Miami's Pro Player Stadium this week, every plate appearance by the New York Yankees' Jason Giambi would be greeted by catcalls of "Ste-roids! Ste-roids!" from the partisan Florida Marlins crowd, writes George Kimball
Last week, as the Yankees were playing the Boston Red Sox in the American League Championship Series, the New York first baseman had been served with a subpoena, ordering him to testify before a grand jury investigating the affairs of one Victor Conte and his company, BALCO (an acronym for Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative) and Conte's relationship with Giambi and a star-studded pantheon of 40 athletes whose disciplines run from baseball (Giambi and San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds) to football (Oakland Raiders linebacker Bill Romanowski) to track and field (the husband-and-wive sprinter duo of Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones, world champion Kelli White, and shot putter Kevin Toth).
For the record, authorities have maintained the stance that the athletes are potential witnesses and not targets, per se, of the probe, but if the case plays out in the manner many expect it will, it could shake the very foundation of the American sporting world.
For decades the citus-altius-fortius game has involved staying one step ahead of the law, and this Conte fellow is no stranger to doping scandals. He was the "nutritionist" who three years ago supplied the supplement which led Marion Jones's former husband, shot putter CJ Hunter, to submit a specimen containing 1,000 times the allowable trace of the steroid nandrolone. In the wake of the test result, Hunter quietly withdrew from the Sydney Olympics, citing a "knee injury". Conte said the positive test was the result of "contaminated iron supplements" he had provided Hunter, and acknowledged sprinters Linford Christie and Merlene Ottey had been given the same supplement.
Dope-testing is "a cat-and-mouse game where the mice are bigger, faster, smarter and have much more financial incentive than the cats," Dr Charles Yesalis of Pennsylvania State University, one of the nation's foremost authorities on performance-enhancing drugs, said in noting we've come a long way from the days when just pissing in the whiskey could be expected to do the trick.
The scandal currently unfolding surfaced almost by accident: the "smoking gun" was in this case a recently-used syringe handed over last June to the US Anti-Doping Agency by a disgruntled track-and-field coach who remains anonymous to this day. Through a process of reverse engineering, Dr Don Catlin was not only able to identify the molecular structure of a previously unknown steroid called tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG, but to devise a test for the substance.
When the Olympic Analytical Laboratory re-tested specimens taken at the US Outdoor Championships last summer, "several" American athletes tested positive for the "designer steroid". The lab has since provided technical assistance to the IAAF, which will re-analyse specimens left over from August's World Championships in Paris.
At this stage, the National Football League has said it would "consider" testing for THG. Major League Baseball has taken the matter under advisement, noting that placing THG on its list of proscribed substances would require the consent of the Players Association, but it is probably worth noting baseball instituted steroid testing prior to the season just passed, and this year for the first time since 1993 not a single player hit as many as 50 home runs.
Conte's claim is that BALCO takes blood and urine samples from its prospective clients and, after careful analysis, provides supplements and dietary suggestions in a personally-tailored regimen. Bonds, whose record-shattering 73 home run barrage two years years ago raised eyebrows around the country, has acknowledged and credited Conte's body-building assistance.
It was another doctor associated with BALCO who supplied teenage sprinter Kelli White with the "medication" she claimed to have taken to combat narcolepsy, which led to a positive test for the stimulant, modafinil, following her gold medal-winning performances in the 100 and 200 metre at the Paris World Championships.
Last month, employing tactics worthy of a SWAT team, a joint force of federal and state agents raided the offices of BALCO, and the subpoenas started flying around a few weeks later. Barry Bonds was served with his after the Giants had been eliminated by the Marlins in the National League play-offs. "Barry is a witness and not a target of the grand jury," said Bonds's attorney Mark Rains, "but when Barry gets a grand jury subpoena and his trainer's door gets kicked in by drug enforcement agents, that's when I get involved."
Officially, the authorities are investigating BALCO for financial improprieties (read: money-laundering and tax evasion) as well as the illegal distribution of narcotics, but in a broader sense the probe could not only alter the face of the NFL and Major League Baseball, but decimate America's prospective 2004 Olympic team. But if what we've seen so far represents the tip of the iceberg, the scientists involved warn that THG may already be passé.
"Clearly, if somebody was able to fly under the radar screen, there's no reason to believe that other modifications of the molecule are not possible," said Dr Gary Wadler, a New York University School of Medicine professor who serves on the World Anti-Doping Agency's research committee. "If you assume otherwise," agreed Dr Yesalis, "you are naïve at best."
