Officials at the World Anti-Doping Agency said yesterday that they had obtained and identified a new steroid that apparently was designed for the purpose of evading drug-testers, much like the now-famous THG that was allegedly distributed by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO).
WADA officials, however, said they did not believe it had been used by athletes in any competitions.
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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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Olivier Rabin, science director for WADA, said an anonymous tipster informed the organization last June that the steroid -- which a Montreal lab determined to be desoxy-methyl-testosterone, or DMT -- had been seized by Canadian customs agents at the U.S.-Canadian border. The seizure occurred in Dec. 1, 2003, a Canadian customs official said.
The man who attempted to carry the substance into Canada was former Canadian sprinter Derek Dueck, 30, who was convicted last week of smuggling a controlled, regulated substance into Canada, according to a spokesperson in the Lethbridge, Alberta, court. Dueck was charged in Coutts, Alberta, on Dec. 1, 2003.
Dueck, who listed his place of residence as Calgary according to court records, retired in 1999 after serving out a two-year ban from track and field for a positive test for the steroid androstenedione in 1997. He faced a lifetime ban for avoiding a random urine test in 2000, but the charge was expunged from the record after he argued that he had already given notice of his retirement.
WADA worked with Canadian customs to identify the substance but did not receive any information about the individual from whom it was seized. Rabin said WADA was unable to trace the anonymous tipster, who corresponded via e-mail.
"It's not in our mandate to track and punish people," Rabin said. "What we were very happy with was to have access to this vial."
Rabin said no WADA officials had any information about the person charged in the case. He said they did not even know if it was a person connected to sport.
Christiane Ayotte, the director of the International Olympic Committee-accredited lab in Montreal, helped identify the substance, a few milliliters of which were seized in a flask.
Like THG, she said, it was mixed in oil. Analysis showed that it was a chemical alteration of the known -- and extremely potent and dangerous -- steroid methyl testosterone. She said she believed DMT was applied on the skin.
"The thing I find worrisome," she said, is such "potent reactives cannot be handled in the basement. It means some chemist with a degree in organic chemistry is helping design these steroids . . .
"We're really in the presence of a market that is, sadly enough -- I don't want to say 'exploding' -- but it's not one [designer steroid] every 10 years, it seems to be quite rapid."
Ayotte said thousands of urine tests from athletes in track and field, tennis, baseball and swimming had been reexamined, and none showed evidence that the drug had been used. Furthermore, she said, the substance exhibited several known steroid markers when it was broken down, suggesting that it would have been detected in standard drug tests.
Rabin said the drug would be examined in further studies to determine its effects and potency. He said WADA did not know if the drug was connected with the recent BALCO scandal.
It was a few months before that seizure, in the summer of 2003, that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency was tipped off to the existence of THG when track coach Trevor Graham sent a syringe of it to the agency.
Kelli White, Regina Jacobs and Dwain Chambers and a number of other track and NFL stars tested positive for, or admitted using, THG, which was allegedly provided by BALCO.
