American tests positive for illegal drugs at WAVA

Note: This was originally written for Athletics Weekly

By Ken Stone

Nearly 6,000 athletes from 74 nations gathered in Gateshead last summer for the World Veterans Athletic Championships. The weather was gorgeous and competition keen, and some 66 world age-group records were set. But the 13th biennial WAVA meet proved unlucky for one athlete -- and the veterans movement as well.

For the first time, a veteran athlete tested positive for illegal drugs. And he or she was from the nation that launched the masters movement in the late 1960s -- America.

More than five months after closing ceremonies at WAVA, the Swedish president of the World Association of Veteran Athletes, Torsten Carlius, revealed: “We have been lucky enough to have no positive tests in Buffalo (New York) and in Durban (South Africa, the WAVA meets in 1995 and 1997, respectively). In Gateshead, there is reported one positive test.”

Later, the leader of U.S. masters, Ken Weinbel of Seattle, Washington, wrote me: “I was informed by USATF that a USA athlete tested positive at Gateshead. This was the first (”A” sample) test only. The athlete's identity is protected until such time that (an) additional test is conducted, appeals made, etc. Only after the whole process is allowed to run its course and the athlete is found guilty would that athlete's name be released. ”

Weinbel, an M70 hammer thrower, insists that he has no idea who tested positive in the 540-member American contigent to Gateshead. Carlius, the 60-year-old chief financial officer of the housing company AB H”lsingborgshem, has not responded to further queries to pin down whether the athlete is a male or female, track or field event practitioner or his/her age group.

Indeed, many critical questions remain: Was this athlete credited with a national or world WAVA record? Was the offending drug something any older athlete could have taken as part of treating a health condition?

And finally: Could the changing hormonal/chemical makeup of aging athletes account for the positive test?

According to Charles DesJardins or Carson City, Nevada, a member of the IAAF Veterans Committee and a longtime panelist of the USATF doping hearings board, the athlete’s identity could be shrouded in secrecy for months or even years. Besides a few in WAVA and the IAAF, only a handful of USATF officials -- including a randomly selected three-member appeals panel -- know who tested positive at Gateshead. And their lips are sealed.

“I can’t find it out (the athlete’s name), and I’m on the inside,” DesJardins told me in a phone conversation.

Dr. Gabriel Dolle, an IAAF anti-doping officer, wrote me: “Questions pertaining to the athlete concerned could eventually, once the confidentiality period has expired, be brought to the attention of the National Federation who must deal with the case.”

Only after a “B” urine sample from the Gateshead athlete is found positive, and the USATF hearings and appeal regimen results in a finding of guilt, will the IAAF publish the name of the athlete in its monthly report.

This much can be said, however: An American athlete who tests positive is barred from competing in USATF-sanctioned events until cleared.

DesJardins, who says he has sat on 25 to 30 drug panels over the past 12 years, says legal considerations (lawsuit fears) have tightened privacy aspects of the doping process in recent years in the United States, especially in the wake of high-profile cases such as Butch Reynolds’ that led to large monetary judgments against the IAAF and others.

The first drug positive in veterans history could be the last, however.

Mainly for reasons of expense, the USATF does no drug-testing at its national indoor and outdoor masters championships. And at least one prominent leader in the masters movement say WAVA should cease drug-testing as well.

“So many masters athletes take prescription drugs that would test positive,” says retired lawyer David Pain of San Diego, who organized the first U.S. masters nationals in 1968 and led a groundbreaking veterans track tour of Europe in 1972. “I’m opposed to testing. The cost is getting more expensive, and it could kill WAVA -- they don’t have that kind of money. It could kill the sport.”

Pain -- who was a member of the WAVA Executive Council before retiring from track to become a world-class masters cyclist -- says WAVA has become enmeshed in IAAF politics to its own detriment.

An “inestimable small number of masters athletes” take performance-enchancing drugs, Pain thinks, so the cost of testing just isn’t worth it -- even though it might lead to the loss of the IAAF’s financial support of WAVA, which in 1999-2000 is $40,000 U.S.

It’s been reported that 50 drug tests were conducted at the world WAVA meets in Buffalo and Durban. No figure has been released for Gateshead.

WAVA president Carlius is not swayed by arguments against testing.

“It is my and WAVA's intention to develop the number of tests in the ambition to avoid any use of banned substances,” Carlius wrote me via e-mail in January. “These do definitely not belong to our veterans movement and I want to underline this position strongly.”