In light of an announcement by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) that a previously undetectable "designer" steroid was being used by several American track and field athletes, the NCAA now will begin testing for the drug known as tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG.

The USADA said it received a call this summer from a person said to be a "high-profile track and field coach" who provided the names of U.S. and international athletes who he said were taking an undetectable steroid. This coach sent the agency a syringe with a sample of the substance.

The contents were sent to the International Olympic Committee's accredited anti-doping laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles. Don Catlin, head of the lab, was able to identify the contents of the syringe and confirm it would not have been noticed in normal laboratory testing. The UCLA lab is the same one used by the NCAA for its drug testing.

The UCLA lab has since developed a test to detect this steroid in athletes' urine samples.

"We'll need to start testing for that steroid," said Frank Uryasz, president of The National Center for Drug Free Sport, which handles drug tests for NCAA athletes. "Previously it was not something we had been detecting and now that the UCLA lab has a method to detect it, yes, we'll start testing for it."

Uryasz, who said THG is banned by the NCAA as a "related compound," added there are no plans to go back and test samples that pre-
viously were negative. Those samples, he said, are generally discarded.

"The NCAA test includes hundreds of compounds, but this is a different compound, so the laboratory will have to use a different method and there are costs involved in that, but that's the nature of sport drug testing," he said. "The drugs change, and so the labs and organizations have to keep up with it. In sports, it's a moving target."

The NCAA does about 13,000 drug tests a year from all championship sports, Uryasz said. There's also a year-round program in which his group goes to campuses for testing, but that's currently limited to Divisions I and II football and Division I track and field. There have been discussions, he said, to expand the on-campus program.

The USADA said in a statement that several positive 'A' samples, or preliminary urine samples, collected in competition at the 2003 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships and samples collected out of competition, were found.

The track and field coach who provided the syringe to the USADA identified the source of the previously undetectable steroid as Victor Conte of Bay Area Laboratories Co-Operative (BALCO) Laboratory in Burlingame, California. Because this information pointed to potentially illegal activity by the distributor of a controlled substance, the USADA contacted the U.S. Department of Justice, the USADA said in a statement.

In media reports, Conte has denied BALCO was the source of the drug.

"What we have uncovered appears to be intentional doping of the worst sort," said USADA Chief Executive Officer Terry Madden. "This is a far cry from athletes accidentally testing positive as a result of taking contaminated nutritional supplements."

Uryasz said it's fortunate the UCLA lab was able to quickly develop a method of detecting THG. It can take weeks, months or even years to develop detection methods, he said, and some substances, such as human growth hormone, still can't be detected.

When a compound developed through the pharmaceutical industry potentially has performance-enhancing effects, a detection test often can be created as the drug is going through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's lengthy approval process, Uryasz said.

But in this case, the drug was developed in an underground lab.

Uryasz said incidents such as this seem to be more common in track and field and cycling than other sports.

"A lot of this starts at the highest levels, internationally, and if you look at where the money is in international sport, it's in track and field and it's in cycling," he said. "We don't pay much attention to cycling since that's not an NCAA sport, but we certainly pay attention to what goes on in track and field."

USA Track and Field, the Indianapolis-based governing body for the sport, lauded the USADA for its efforts in pursing those who make and use illegal substances. The group also said in a released statement that "the vast majority of track and field athletes are committed to competing clean."