The Bill Comes Due for Europe's Intolerance of Drug Cheats

The Austrian biathlon team, above, and its cross-country ski team, are under a cloud of suspicion for their association with former coach Walter Mayer, who visited athletes despite being barred for blood doping accusations in 2002. (Ioc Via Associated Press)

PRAGELATO, Italy -- Two days after the midnight doping raid by Italian authorities here Saturday, Harald Wurm was eating pizza in a restaurant when the police struck again.

"Austria?" one asked.

"Yes," the young cross-country skier said, nervously.

"Come with us."

They turned Wurm's living quarters upside down, flipping over the couch, leaving his personal belongings strewn about. Wurm said they found nothing and left the place in a shambles.

"I was angry, it was difficult to concentrate on the sport," said Wurm, who finished a disappointing 24th in the men's sprint event Wednesday. "This is my very first Olympics. I never thought about doping or controls. Now I come here and this happens."

His teammate, Martin Stockinger, finished 20th. "It is very hard to eat pizza and deal with police," Stockinger said. "I am not good for the race. I am very tired. My head is not free. We are sportsmen. Nothing else."

When Congress shamed some of baseball's biggest power hitters on Capitol Hill last year, it worked. Whatever grandstanding transpired, the steroid hearings roundly embarrassed union chief Donald Fehr and Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig into toughening the sport's lax drug policy.

To catch the silent intruder, turn off the lights and wait. Cuff the cheats any way you can.

Yet there is something troubling about the way the Austrians have been singled out at the Winter Games. It bears watching abroad. See, the International Olympic Committee did not conduct the raid, although it turned over the information that led to it. Many European countries have enacted extremely tough laws for users and purveyors of performance-enhancing drugs. Russian biathlete Olga Pyleva, stripped of her 15-kilometer silver medal after a positive test for a banned substance, may face worse than a two-year automatic IOC ban. Pyleva may need a lawyer to keep her out of an Italian jail.

Intolerance for steroids in Europe is growing. U.S. track star Kelli White, in France for the 2003 world championships, tested positive for modafinil, which was not banned by the IOC. But she was caught because the French government casts a wider net, testing for more drugs. The French, too, often jail their performance-enhancing users and dealers.

Here, they want every cheat (or perceived cheat) to pay for his or her crimes and/or associations (or perceived crimes and/or associations) with known drug cheats. It's the Olympic equivalent of civil liberties vs. national security, a perpetual weighing of the tactics against the results.