OLYMPICS: LAWYERS IN, DRUGS OUT

Lausanne, Switzerland -- The Results Are In And The Cheaters Are
Out.

Making a major concession to turn over management of athlete drug-testing
results at the Sydney and Salt Lake Olympics to a new, independent body,
leaders of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) joined with athletes,
sport federation leaders and government officials in heralding what they
foresee as an era of drug-free sport.

The new force in the fight against performance-enhancing drugs is the World
Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA. Initially criticized for being too closely
tied to sport to be trusted to root out cheaters, WADA underwent
substantial changes Thursday to earn the endorsement of those who believe
doping threatens the nature of all sport.

"No one is saying it's perfect, but I have never felt better about anything
that has come out of the IOC," said former U.S. Olympic medalist Robert
Ctvrtlik of California, a member of the Olympic Athletes Commission named
to WADA's board of directors. "I didn't train for 14 years with the U.S.
[volleyball] team to be on the gold medal stand and have someone wonder,
'What drugs did he take?' A weight has been lifted for the athlete who wins
without drugs."

After a daylong, closed-door meeting between about 30 international
representatives of sport and government, leaders emerged claiming they
found themselves in unanimous agreement that WADA must be accountable,
transparent, consistent and independent of any outside influence in order
to police the world's amateur sporting competition.

"The amount of goodwill was quite remarkable," said IOC Vice President
Richard Pound of Canada, who will chair WADA's start-up phase. "In the past
there has been a tendency to regard a positive [drug] test as a failure.
The view we are going to be taking now is a positive test is a success. It
is one more message to anyone who is inclined to cheat: that's not the way
to do it."

The reverberations of the new international system of athletic drug testing
will be felt in the United States at all competition levels, from the
National Football League to little league, federal drug czar Gen. Barry
McCaffrey pledged.

"There is no question how this is going to come out: We are going to demand
that drugs come out of U.S. sports, whether they are amateur or
professional," said McCaffrey, who joined leaders of sport from Australia
and Canada in representing 26 nations intent on harmonizing athletic drug
testing standards. "We want to begin a process to clean up our own act."

The White House will soon announce creation of a drugs-in-sport task force
to address the growing number of young people -- estimated at 400,000
annually -- who use steroids or other chemical supplements to improve their
physical appearance and athletic prowess.

McCaffrey and other government leaders got much of what they wanted from
the Olympic leaders in organizing WADA. The biggest shift came when the IOC
Medical Commission agreed to relinquish its long-standing control over
handling of positive drug-testing results during the Olympic Games. The
WADA board is expected to finalize a detailed "results management plan" at
its March meeting that will be in place in time for the 2000 Summer Games
in Sydney.

"What that will do is reinforce the importance of WADA and, secondly, to
remove I hope for once and for all, any suspicion -- which I consider
unjustified -- that we are somehow fooling with the results," said Pound.

Getting a specific, open process for test results management was one of the
biggest concerns for Sydney organizers, who don't want a drug scandal
tainting the 2000 Olympics.

"We couldn't be happier," Australian Minister for Justice and Customs
Amanda Vanstone said of the agreement.

Other WADA pledges include development of a new anti-doping code to replace
the thinly worded IOC anti-doping code; commencing standardized
out-of-competition drug-testing procedures and sanctions to be adopted by
all international sport federations; work to harmonize each nation's
anti-doping laws and foster greater cooperation in intercepting shipments
of per-formance-enhancing drugs; seeking bids to relocate WADA from
Lausanne to someplace without such heavy IOC connections; putting more
women on the board (Vanstone was the only woman at the WADA table); and
embark on an intensified, international research program to develop new
testing methods and study the health effects of doping on athletes.

One of the most significant breakthroughs was amending WADA's charter to
give athletes equal representation on the board to the IOC and
international sport federations.

"This has been an incredible step forward," said Norwegian speed skater and
former Olympian Johann Koss.

"It will be much more difficult to be a cheater in the future. We now can
let young children know there is a possibility to win without drugs."