Kathy Jager begins comeback

By Ken Stone

Apocalypse shmockalypse. Kathy Jager is back.

The 58-year-old sprinter from Glendale, Ariz., who made world news when she became the oldest track athlete in history to receive a two-year drug ban, returned to competition Saturday (Sept. 15, 2001) at the San Diego Senior Olympics after USATF and the IAAF lifted her suspension.

Jager won the 50, 100 and 200, plus several throws in the W55 age group at the 14^th annual San Diego senior festival. It was her first meet since August 1999, when she won two golds, three silvers and a bronze medal at the World Veterans Athletic Championships in Gateshead, England – her first international competition.

That was the meet where an Australian sprint rival – noting her husky physique – accused her of being a man. That in turn triggered screaming tabloid headlines about the “sex row athlete.” But Jager, a married mother of two and grandmother of four, endured the outrageous (and quickly refuted) claim with dignity and humor and left England with her head held high.

But once she got home, she was brought down fast – learning that a doctor-prescribed hormone replacement therapy for her menopause symptoms had triggered IAAF alarms.  Her Gateshead drug test found  methyltestosterone, an ingredient of her menopause medicine that’s on the IAAF banned-substances list. Drug sanctions quickly followed. (She’d been unaware of its illegality, and never denied it was in her system – having listed it on forms during the drug testing process.)

When word got out in May 2000 that a 56-year-old grandmother received a two-year ban from sanctioned track competition, it prompted a sarcastic (and inaccurate) jab at Jager: Sports Illustrated chose her drug sanction as “This Week’s Sign of the Apocalypse.”  But no, SI, she wasn’t stripped of her medals.

Saturday, wearing a tight green singlet that revealed her still-powerful torso, Jager won the 50 in 7.85, the 100 in 14.34 and the 200 in 30.82 – all into a wind on San Diego State University’s red Mondo track. The 100 time ranks No. 3 in the world this year in her age group, and her 200 performance is No. 10  – even though it came after six hours of competition – and into a stiff breeze.

 In 1999, Jager won the world 100 title in 13.55 with a 1.5mps aiding wind and the 200 in 28.34 with an illegal 2.3 wind.  This past July, at the world masters championships in Brisbane, Australia, the W55 sprints were won in 13.93  and 28.72.

But Jager thinks she would have been in the Brisbane hunt had she been granted early reinstatement  -- the same kind given several open track stars on the eve of the Sydney Olympics.

“I would have been there on the top,” Jager said after her six-event outing Saturday. “I would have won.”

Jager also regrets not having had a chance to defend her Gateshead titles on Australian soil.  In 1999, Brisbane meet officials – hugely embarrassed that an Aussie athlete challenged Jager’s gender – personally invited Jager to compete in their 2001 world  meet. Jager wanted to prove to her Down Under critics that she could win without the negligible amount of synthetic testosterone in her system.

To qualify for reinstatement, Jager had to undergo four unannounced drug tests within a year prior to resuming competition. (She had immediately halted her “illegal” medication once she learned it was on the IAAF no-no list.) One tester knocked on her door in Arizona the Saturday night before Easter Sunday. Another tester tracked her down at 10:30 at night – at a friend’s house in Rochester, Minnesota.

In addition, Jager lobbied successfully for an IAAF drug exemption, allowing her to take a normally banned diuretic to control high blood pressure and the fluid-retention side effects of her new hormone replacement therapy. But it took detailed letters from three doctors – and just the right phrasing – to gain her needed medical waiver. She gives credit to World Masters Athletics President Torsten Carlius of Sweden, who despite his foot-dragging at other points helped advise Jager’s doctors make the arguments that would pass muster with IAAF authorities in Monaco. Her medical waiver basically allows her to live a healthy life AND compete in track. Not a priority for the IAAF, but a godsend for Kathy Jager.

Jager, a registered nurse, said the San Diego meet represented “a new career for me. I wanted to do well. My goal is not to get injured.”

“I didn’t feel that I had to come out and prove anything,” Jager said of her return to track. “But I showed I’m not intimidated by what happened.” She was acutely mindful of the previous week’s attacks on America that rendered her fight against world track authorities trivial, and noted that “whenever I felt sorry for myself, I said, ‘This is no big deal. I’m alive; I’m healthy. I have great family and friends’ support.”

“Today was a celebration for many of us,” she said as her husband, Carl – a retired transportation official in Maricopa County, Arizona – sat beside her in proud support. He’ll join her as they continue a comeback tour. Jager said she planned to compete at the Club West Masters meet Sept. 29, 2001, in Santa Barbara; the Nevada Senior Olympics shortly afterward in Las Vegas; and the Huntsman World Senior Games Oct. 9-10 in St. George, Utah.

Her two-year layoff from competition didn’t mean a two-year retreat into a cave, however. Besides getting involved with a new USATF Masters committee on doping, Jager was a sought-after speaker at schools and senior centers, giving motivational talks that drew on her Christian faith and recent trials. She even helped coach pole vaulters at Greenway High School.

She found herself mothering young athletes, especially girls -- helping them see through their adolescent angst and encouraging them in their nascent track careers.

“We don’t know our own possibilities until we’ve been challenged,” Jager said. “One girl said I made a difference in her life. That was as important as any medal that I ever won.”