Harrison fails drugs test as crisis deepens
THE drugs crisis in athletics deepened last night when Calvin Harrison, America's Olympic and world gold medallist, joined Britain's Dwain Chambers in testing positive for a banned drug.
Harrison, like Chambers, is coached by the Ukrainian Remi Korchemny, who has been caught up in the doping scandal that has emerged in America over the past 10 days.
Harrison tested positive for the stimulant modafinil when scientists reviewed 350 samples taken at the United States Championships in June. Samples were retested after the discovery of a new designer anabolic steroid which until recently was undetectable.
Sources close to the case claim Harrison is just the beginning and many more top names will emerge during the next few days. They believe as many as ten top American athletes may have tested positive for the drug used to treat the sleep disorder narcolepsy.
Doping experts are suspicious that so many athletes are suddenly testing positive for the drug and believe it may be linked to the fact that they were also taking the anabolic steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG). It is possible they believed that modafinil would act as a masking agent in case laboratories could test for THG.
"Apparently, there's an epidemic among track athletes of narcolepsy in the United States," said Sweden's Arne Ljungqvist, the anti-doping chief for the International Olympic Committee as well as the International Association of Athletics Federations. His tongue was firmly in his cheek. Harrison is the third American athlete to test positive for modafinil. Kelli White faces being stripped of the gold medals she won in the 100 and 200 metres at the World Championships in Paris in August following a positive test for the same stimulant.
Chris Phillips, who finished sixth in the 110m hurdles in Paris, has also tested positive for the drug. White and Phillips are training partners of Chambers, who admitted last week he had tested positive for THG. White, Chambers, Harrison and Phillips are all clients of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (Balco), which is the focus of a federal grand jury investigation in San Francisco.
Victor Conte, the company's founder, claims that THG is not a banned substance. Harrison was a member of the American team who won the gold medal in the 4x400m relay in Paris. He was also part of the team, along with Michael Johnson, who claimed gold in the same event at the Olympics in Sydney three years ago.
But America face the prospect of being stripped of that gold medal because the IOC have launched an investigation into why Jerome Young was allowed to compete despite having tested for nandrolone a year earlier. Observer
