What makes Supergran run?

Churchgoing grandmother Kathy Jager was shattering track records -- until she was barred because her hormone replacement drugs contained steroids.

By Steve Boman and Sean Callahan

Jul 31, 2002 | Three years ago, at an international meet in England, 56-year-old American sprinter Kathy Jager ran 100 meters in 13.55 seconds, obliterating her competition by nearly a half second. Jager followed that by running the 200 meters in 28.34 seconds, breaking the existing age-group world record. Her glory, however, was brief. Jager, a grandmother of four from Phoenix, tested positive for anabolic steroids at the meet.

Jager has always insisted that she was innocent, that she wasn't shooting steroid-filled syringes into her veins, that her only crime was following doctor's orders and taking a little green hormone replacement pill that quelled her post-menopausal hot flashes. Nevertheless, as a result of testing positive, her times were expunged. Sports Illustrated mocked her in its "This Week's Sign That the Apocalypse Is Upon Us" section. And she was banned from sanctioned track competitions for two years, an exile that ended on Aug. 1, 2001. This year Jager, now 59, will compete in her most important meet since her reinstatement, the USA Track & Field National Masters Outdoor Championship, to be held Aug. 8-11 in Orono, Maine.

Jager's is a strange, if largely unnoticed, tale. Her story has embroiled international track officials in an argument over where to draw the line between performance-enhancing drugs and life-enhancing medications. It has also revealed the enormous differences in how various sporting organizations regulate artificial substances. The international track and field community imposes the most stringent rules, while Major League Baseball, for example, appears to have virtually no regulations addressing steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.

A key part of Jager's story is hormone replacement therapy, a fact of life for many women who run masters track -- but one that the governing bodies of the sport seem unprepared to confront. And now to complicate the issue further comes the news that women who take estrogen and progestin may face increased breast cancer risks. At its crux, however, Jager's tale reveals the competitiveness of masters athletics and underscores this sad fact about our times: Even churchgoing grandmothers are suspected of taking drugs to get bigger, faster, stronger.

Kathy Jager is a high-voiced woman with a body that could serve as a template if Mattel ever makes a Linebacker Barbie. Just 5 feet 4 inches tall, Jager is intensely muscled. She has the frame of a male college wrestler: slender legs, slim hips and a broad back. She also has the muscle tone prized by Venice Beach bodybuilders. When she sits next to her husband, Carl, on a sofa in their Arizona home, the contrast is obvious: His limbs have the seal-smooth muscles of a recreational swimmer; her legs look filled with twisted rubber bands. "We go to the beach," Jager says, "and girls whistle at his legs and the guys come up to me and ask me how much I lift."

She is so well defined that it looks like ... well, like she's on steroids. Jager, a nurse, acknowledges that people jump to that conclusion. But she says there is a problem with that assumption: "I've always looked that way." Jager says she has had the same build for the last 40 years, long before steroids crept into popular culture. "Oh, Kathy always had broad shoulders and a little butt," says Jager's aunt, 73-year-old Jan Quist. "Her mother, who died when she was young, had the same build as her. Kathy has always been athletic, and she always had a very muscular build. I don't think that it's different now than it ever was."

Athletic as she's always been, Jager didn't run her first track meet until she was 50. "I know I came to this sport late in life. But God gave me some ability and I wanted to take advantage of it, no matter what my age," Jager explains. In masters sports, athletes compete in five-year age brackets: 50-54, 55-59, and so on. At her first meet, Jager swept up a handful of gold medals. She never looked back.

With her blond helmet of hair and teenager-quality times, Jager became one of most recognized athletes in masters sports. In early 1999, Jager set her sights on the most prestigious masters track meet there is: the World Association of Veteran Athletes World Championships, a meet held every two years in different locations. (WAVA is now known as World Masters Athletics, or WMA.)

Three years ago, the world championships were held in Gateshead, England. "I had never been overseas," Jager explains. "One of my dreams was to be an Olympian, and this was as close as I was going to get to that kind of a level."

Gateshead was in some ways no different from any previous meet for Jager. Yes, there were many more athletes at the meet -- nearly 6,000 people 35 and older competed. Yes, the competition was better. And yes, a handful of athletes were quietly required to provide urine samples for drug testing, which never happened at American masters meets. But Jager felt at home, and the predictable happened: Competitors gasped when she rumbled down the track. In the 100 meters, she smoked every other woman in her age group -- including the world record holder.

Then the surprise came: An Australian competitor -- a woman who watched Jager's broad back fade into the distance in the 100-meter race -- believed a fraud was occurring. The Aussies filed a formal challenge that Jager was a man posing as a woman. Jager learned of the charge from a journalist. "A reporter comes up and says to me, 'What comments do you have to make about this controversial issue?' That was the first I heard of it," Jager says. "I told him that it will be a surprise to my husband, two children and four grandchildren."

Next Page: "Is This a Man or a Woman?"

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