Bethesda swimmer Rachael Burke was a local girl who shined. She never made an Olympic team, but she qualified for two Olympic trials and piled up academic and athletic awards at Good Counsel High and the Curl-Burke Swim Club. She left for the University of Virginia with a stellar reputation.
In the coming days, however, Burke will find her legacy tarnished: The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, or USADA, will bar her from Olympic-related competitions for two years because of a positive test for a steroid. To hordes of collegiate rivals and others who learn of the ban, they will conclude one thing about Burke: She is a cheater.
Rachael Burke of Bethesda, who will be allowed to continue competing for the University of Virginia, said she has spent months trying to determine what caused her to test positive for a little-known steroid called Boldione.
(AP Special Pat Little For The Washington Post)
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_____ 2004 Summer Olympics _____
• Look back at the Athens Games, highlighted by Michael Phelps's eight medals and marked by unfounded worries over terrorism.
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Only Burke, 21, says she didn't cheat. She said she is neither guilty of taking steroids, nor of ingesting any products -- such as nutritional supplements or vitamins -- that historically have been known to be contaminated with steroids. She said she has spent months trying to determine what caused the positive test for a small amount of a little-known steroid called Boldione.
Her best guess: a fruit smoothie from a shop that uses protein boosts that she drank the night before a urine test on May 1.
Her claim of innocence is predictable. Drug testing catches dozens of athletes who, like Burke, say they did nothing wrong; most blame contaminated supplements or vitamin products, which are becoming a growing problem in sports. Three years ago, the International Olympic Committee commissioned a study that concluded that nearly 20 percent of supplements made in the United States showed some contamination.
Burke said she took every precaution to protect herself from the ignominy of a positive drug test, avoiding supplements so stringently that she refused to take even common vitamins. She said her family, coach and close friends believe her. But several officials connected to the drug industry or Olympic movement privately expressed skepticism at Burke's claims.
To the USADA, which oversees all Olympic drug testing in the United States adhering to the rules of the World Anti-Doping Code, the details of Burke's story are irrelevant. The USADA makes no attempt to determine whether athletes like Burke knowingly or innocently took steroids. It is enough to have found a positive test, anti-doping officials say.
World Anti-Doping Agency Chairman Dick Pound said there could be no leniency in such cases without destroying the system's credibility. Just because Burke didn't mean to cheat doesn't mean she didn't benefit from the drug, Pound said. And just because the drug was found in a tiny amount doesn't mean it wasn't there in a larger amount a few days before, a USADA official told her father, Tim Burke. In other words, she could have been at the end of a steroid cycle.
The system, Pound said, protects clean athletes from any who obtain an unfair advantage, regardless of intent.
Burke argues that she is one of the clean athletes being hurt -- and the damage, she says, is almost immeasurable. A system designed to protect her, she said, has done the opposite, destroying her reputation and giving her no real chance for justice.
"I went through a stage when I was really upset," Burke said. "Then I got really angry. . . . The hardest part is that hundreds of people think I'm a cheater. The hardest part is the word associated with a positive drug test: You're cheating. In no way have I ever cheated."
A Losing Fight
When informed of the positive test in early June, Burke said, she vowed to fight the result in arbitration. But the more she learned about the process, she said, the more resigned she became. The USADA has never lost a case. The Court of Arbitration for Sport, which hears appeals of USADA decisions, applies the same rules as the USADA. And the cost of paying the legal, technical and medical experts necessary to prove her claims seemed both daunting and, ultimately, useless, she said.
"It was adding up to quite a pretty penny, $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 for me to be able to tell them I didn't do this, and then they would look me in the eye and say, 'I'm sorry, you know the rules,' " Burke said.
Indeed, that is likely what Burke would have heard, according to Pound.
