David Black has tried so hard to remain optimistic when it comes to athletes using performance-enhancing drugs. But he just can’t.

“From my perspective, the world of sport is more corrupted than we probably appreciate,” said Black, founder and head of Nashville-based Aegis Analytical Laboratories, a company that provides toxicology consulting services to sports organizations and other agencies.

Black’s cynicism is understandable. In one scandal-filled month last summer, Tour de France winner Floyd Landis and sprinters Justin Gatlin, Marion Jones and LaTasha Jenkins all failed drug tests, although Jones was later cleared.

Barry Bonds, long linked to steroids, apparently tested positive for amphetamines last year. Mark McGwire failed recently to be elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame because voters are uneasy about his possible steroid use. News reports claimed several members of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers obtained refillable steroid prescriptions the week before the team left for the 2004 Super Bowl, although none failed a drug test.

Groups as disparate as the LPGA and the World Chess Federation have announced they will begin drug testing in their sports.

The World Chess Federation? Where will it all end? And can any sport be trusted not to use performance-enhancing drugs?

Black says no, and he has seen it all.

As a forensic scientist who began conducting post-mortem investigations 20 years ago, he has seen the average number of drugs in a body rise from about four to 10, with as many as 20 showing up in at least one instance.

His lab began as a doping control lab at Vanderbilt University in 1986 and has been private since 1990. Black, who helped set up the National Football League’s steroid-testing program in the 1980s under then-Commissioner Pete Rozelle, has done a considerable amount of work for colleges and has testified at numerous sports doping hearings.

He has tested 11-year-olds for anabolic steroids that their parents were giving them to develop a “super kid.” He has tested one man who was drinking his girlfriend’s urine, because he knew that women produce more steroids when they are pregnant.

Black says that at one time he might have believed that some sports – or specific positions within sports – were more likely to use performance-enhancing drugs. Not anymore.

“We have evolved into a culture, and society, that sees a need for a drug for some purpose,” Black said. “Athletics is not isolated from the rest of a increasingly drug-dependent American society.”

When asked if any sport is above suspicion, Frank Shorter, the 1972 Olympic marathon gold medalist and now spokesman for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, said unfortunately, no.

Athletes in any sport involving endurance or recovery could benefit, he said.

“These drugs will aid that. They work,” he said. “In any one of the sports you choose, a rogue competitor, yes, there is some chemical that will allow them to compete better in that particular sport.

“My saying any athlete can benefit is different from saying, “I think everyone is doing it, and I think it’s hopeless and I think the athletes are always ahead, so why should we try?’ That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just answering your question.”

Shorter said the most encouraging thing since the advent of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in 2000 is that athletes are talking to the organization.

“They know you get results,” he said. “When I was in the locker room in the early “70s, did I know who was taking what? Did I know where to get it? Yes. Did I have anywhere I thought I could go with this information that it would have any impact? No. Was it any more frequent? I’m not sure it was that much different.”

Of course, illegal drugs are only one aspect of the problem. Not all the drugs are illegal, and not all of them are taken by professional athletes.

What about the weightlifter who chugs a Red Bull or a similar energy drink before a workout?

Or the pitcher who downs six cups of coffee before a game?

Or the wrestler who pops an over-the-counter appetite suppressant so he can make weight?

Also, drugs prescribed for one problem, such as depression or attention deficit disorder, can have side effects beneficial for athletes – slowed pulse or heightened focus, for instance.

Sometimes, these benefits have been discovered almost accidentally, in the same way doctors discovered that some anti-depressants decrease the cravings for nicotine.

Beta blockers used to treat angina slow the heart rate, which would aid pistol or rifle shooters who train themselves to sqeeze the trigger between heartbeats.

So, what can be done?

Shorter stands by the Anti-Doping Agency and its enforcement.

Black has a few other suggestions.

“If I were drug czar for a day, there’s a number of things I would do,” he said.

“People would think I’m crazy. I’d ban advertising on television for any medications.”

. I would require that all medications have to taste bad or look bad instead of making them look like candy and taste like candy. In the good old days, medication didn’t taste good.

“I would put chemical tracers in all the narcotics, and all new things like EPO and HGH. … In explosives, they put chemical tags in so they can track back the origin of the powder used in explosives for bombs and things. You could put chemical tracers that are benign in these (drugs), and you could tell if somebody was using HGH who shouldn’t be.

“The FDA ought to have oversight on the production of these narcotics. All these drugs are produced beyond their medical need, and they end up on the street.

“That’s my radical solution.”

CM END BOYER

(Mary Schmitt Boyer is a reporter for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. She can be contacted at mschmitt(at)plaind.com.)

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