OLYMPICS AND DRUGS

The drug scandals rocking the world of international sports have confronted
the Olympic movement with a much larger credibility problem than its
leaders seem to realize. Although the Olympic Games no longer represent the
ideal of amateurism, they still embody ideals of fair play and honest
competition. Yet drugs have put even those simple values at risk. Why in
the world would anyone, much less hundreds of millions of people, choose to
watch a competition in which the race goes not to the swift but to the
chemically enhanced?

This has been a drug-ridden summer in sports. The legendary Tour de France
nearly collapsed in embarrassment when the world's best cycling team,
Festina, were suspended for using performance-enhancing drugs. The
International Amateur Athletic Federation announced that two of America's
top athletes, the sprinter Dennis Mitchell and the 1996 Olympic shot put
champion, Randy Barnes, had tested positive for illegal substances, and
suspended both. Then, last Thursday, Michelle Smith-De Bruin, the Irish
swimmer who captured hearts and three gold medals at the 1996 Summer
Olympics, was charged with manipulating a drug test and banned from further
competition.

Reporters who cover sports say there is already so much cynicism among the
athletes that anyone who sets a new world record is immediately suspected
of doping. So far that cynicism has not spread to the public, but it will
surely do so unless the authorities move quickly to develop a more credible
and comprehensive system of testing and punishment. To be fair, the
International Olympic Committee does a far more effective job of policing
drug use than other athletic bodies. But, given its responsibility for one
of the world's premier sports events, it must do even better. The first
order of business is to change attitudes at the top.

Juan Antonio Samaranch, the IOC's president, has convened a board meeting
in Lausanne on Aug. 20 to prepare for a doping "summit" next January. But
Mr. Samaranch's own commitment to the cause is suspect. He recently
suggested to the Spanish daily El Mundo that performance-enhancing drugs
should be permitted unless they pose a threat to the athletes that use them
a bizarre statement that shocked many of his colleagues.

Second, the IOC must be ready to spend serious money on the problem. The
IOC and others have agreed to put $2 million into new research, but experts
say more will be needed to develop tests as sophisticated as the drugs they
are meant to detect. During the Tour de France scandal, experts noted that
there were no reliable tests to detect the substance at the heart of the
scandal---EPO, a synthetic hormone that increases aerobic capacity.

Third, the IOC must bring other governing bodies into line. The
international federations that govern three Olympic sports---cycling,
volleyball and tennis---do not even participate in the lOC's testing
program. It is also common knowledge that some national Olympic committees
are far more vigilant than others. Dick Schultz, an American Olympic
official, put the matter well in a recent interview: "There is -a morass
out there that needs to be reviewed to determine what is
performance-enhancing and what is not. I don't think there's any question
that the drug gurus who are trying to beat the system are ahead of the
police."

The next Games are two years away. That is not a lot of time for Mr.
Samaranch to get ahead of the gurus.

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)