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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
The Jager case galvanized a movement in masters track and field, particularly among Americans, to change the current doping regulations. "It made me into a protester," Jager says. "I'm the Rosa Parks of masters sports."
"For a 60-year-old person to have the exact doping controls as a 20-year-old is ludicrous," says Charles DesJardins, an outspoken member of the IAAF Veterans' Committee. "That's stupidity! But that's the situation older people are in. Instead of encouraging the fitness of older people, we're discouraging fitness. That's absolutely crazy!"
DesJardins favors testing older athletes but rewriting the list of prohibited substances. He says his pleas for change have so far fallen on deaf ears at WMA and the IAAF.
Even the healthiest masters athlete often relies on prescription medications. A recent survey by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer found that 64 percent of 50-and-over senior athletes used prescription medicine. Granted, most prescription medicines are not on the IAAF banned list, which is three pages long, but the ingredients in some of them are. They can be found in cough syrups, medications for high blood pressure, even some treatments to prevent osteoporosis, a common disease in post-menopausal women.
"Some physicians encourage their patients to take hormone replacement therapy for osteoporosis. Some take conjugated estrogen, and some of the combinations can contain testosterone," said Jude McNally, a pharmacist and toxicologist at the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy.
"Certain people need to take certain medicines just to get to the meet, let alone compete in it," adds Ken Weinbel, former chairman of USA Track and Field's masters track and field committee.
One of the most vocal opponents of current drug-testing standards is David Pain, 79, widely regarded as the father of masters track and field. Pain scoffs at the notion that masters athletes should be tested at all. Pain also warns that masters sports is in danger of becoming as deadly serious as the Olympics.
"It looks as though [WMA] is swallowing the IAAF line on drug testing hook, line and sinker. It totally abandons my concept of true spirit that is disappearing in master athletics. People engage in it for camaraderie and fitness," Pain says. "I think testing is a redundant, excessive case of overkill. It is not justified by the number of masters athletes who might take advantage of it."
Those on the other side of the fence say that those are all fine arguments, with one small problem: Doping, they say, is a real-world issue, even in masters sports. The IAAF acknowledged at least seven doping cases against masters athletes. WMA president Torsten Carlius said his organization began testing masters athletes at meets in 1995. "You could see what happened after we started testing," he says. "Some people didn't show up, some people started performing much worse ... I am convinced there were people cheating."
Medical experts say it is unclear whether the 1.25 milligrams of synthetic testosterone found in the Estratest pills gave Jager a performance advantage. Professor Barbara Sherwin, an expert in hormone replacement therapy from McGill University in Montreal, doubts the Estratest would enhance athletic performance. "1.25 milligrams is an exceedingly small dose," she says. "The studies that are available show that there are no symptoms of virilization."
But Dr. Don Catlin, a drug-testing expert from the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine, suspects 1.25 milligrams of methyltestosterone could improve athletic performance. "It's not a huge dose, but women's bodies are very sensitive to anabolic steroids. The normal male production rate of testosterone is 7 milligrams per day. The average woman's is about 0.7 milligrams [per day]. If she is taking double that, that could have an effect."
Adding to the confusion is Jager's performance at Gateshead, which took place roughly three months after she started taking Estratest. She ran faster than she ever had in competition. Her 13.55 in the 100 meters beat her previous personal best of 13.68, which she ran at a meet in Oregon a year before Gateshead, long before she took Estratest. Was the improved time due to the methyltestosterone? Or was it the adrenaline? Although Jager has performed well since her reinstatement -- she won three silver and two bronze medals in the 55-plus age group at the national masters indoor championships in March -- she acknowledges her times have declined. For example, in the Grand Canyon State Games in Tucson, Ariz., in June, she ran the 100 meters in 14.46.
