UCLA LAB TO TEST OLYMPIANS

Anti-Doping Crew Aims To Keep Winter Games Drug-Free

LOS ANGELES -- Employees of a University of California-Los Angeles
laboratory are gearing up for the 2002 Winter Olympics, where they will
conduct all of the urine testing intended to keep the games honest.

Some 35 of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory's employees -- a group as
international as the athletes it tests -- soon will travel to Salt Lake
City. They will begin work Jan. 29 adjacent to the Olympic Village.

"There are very few people who disagree with the statement, 'Sport ought to
be clean,' " said Dr. Don Catlin, director of the 20-year-old UCLA lab.
"The reality is, it isn't. And somebody has to do the work to keep it clean."

Already, drug-testing supplies, including millions of dollars' worth of
scientific equipment, are being stockpiled at the lab just off Olympic
Boulevard in West Los Angeles.

The laboratory is one of two dozen anti-doping facilities accredited by the
International Olympic Committee, but the only one in the United States. As
such, it will do all of the drug-testing work at the winter Olympiad under
a $3.5 million contract.

Nearly all of the 2,500 athletes competing will be tested before the games
begin.

Another 800 will be tested again during competition by the UCLA lab, their
urine anonymously screened for nearly 400 substances banned by the IOC.

Cross-country skiers, biathletes, Nordic combined athletes and long-track
speed skaters also will undergo newly instituted testing for
erythropoietin, or EPO, a hormone that boosts production of red blood cells
that carry oxygen to the muscles.

Doping is less prevalent in winter sports: Experts predict just 1 percent
to 2 percent of athletes will test positive, or about half the rate of
summer Olympians.