Jager blames the decline on age and a dulling of her competitive edge during the two-year ban. "I had been doing what I would call maximum training during that time period," Jager recalls of the months leading up to Gateshead. "Physically, I was probably at the best I'd ever been. I don't believe, and I say this honestly, that I got anything from this pill other than I physically felt better."

Conspiracy theorists looking on the dark side might say this about Jager: Maybe, just maybe, she has been taking methyltestosterone for years on the sly, just like body builders. She is a nurse, after all, and knowing that Gateshead held out the possibility of drug testing she faked hot flashes in order to get her doctor of a decade to prescribe Estratest, which would have masked any illegal drug use. All this would have required a long-term con over her doctor, her husband, her daughter, her son, her relatives back in Minnesota, her co-workers in Arizona, and the teenage athletes she coaches -- and lectures about not taking any altering chemicals, be they alcohol or steroids. That's a lot of effort to beat some other grandmothers in a footrace.

Jager missed out on a lot during her ban. She quit taking Estratest and instead has been taking herbal remedies for her hot flashes, which causes Villa to grimace. "When I heard that, I thought, Oh, Kathy," she says. "One, they might not be safe. And two, she may test positive on that. We really don't know what is in those natural medications."

And even though she had been risking a stroke, Jager was also going without her blood pressure medicine, which is on the IAAF's list of prohibited substances. Shortly after Carlius was interviewed for this story, WMA e-mailed Jager with an exemption from the blood pressure drug ban. "I just about fell over," says Jager.

Whether the move signals a change in WMA's doping policy or is simply a generous response to an individual case is too early to tell. The reformers want to modify the list of prohibited substances. The hardliners, up to this point led by Carlius, want to keep the current zero-tolerance system in place.

What Jager missed most of all was competing as a world-class athlete. She had been invited to the Olympic trials in 2000 to run a masters exhibition, but was barred because of the ban. "Marion Jones was there," she says, her voice cracking.

When she was reinstated, Jager dived right back into competition. She estimates she has competed in nearly a dozen meets since last August, traveling throughout Arizona and to California and Massachusetts to do so. "It's been overwhelming," Jager says of her fellow athletes' response to her return. "Every meet that I go to, people say, 'We feel terrible about what happened to you,' and they welcomed me back warmly."

In the small local meets, she has stepped right back in as the dominant 55-plus female competitor. At larger meets, however, the 59-year-old Jager has seen her supremacy overtaken by younger athletes such as 55-year-old Phil Raschker, recognized as one of the best female masters athletes of all time.

Jager now looks forward to turning 60 next June and once again becoming the youngster in her age group. "It's a whole new world out there waiting to be conquered," she says. Jager has especially set her sights on the WMA World Championships -- the same meet that caused her so much grief in 1999 -- scheduled for next July in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Much as she tries to suppress it, bitterness wells up occasionally. "I feel I was at the top of my game," she says, "and they took that away from me."

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