The NCAA’s 20-year-old drug-testing effort is built on a partnership between an athletics organization that committed in the beginning to conducting a quality program and a laboratory whose director and staff backed up reliable testing with relentless research.

"The NCAA, by committing its dollars to a research laboratory from day one, has been critical to the success of all anti-doping in the U.S.," says Frank Uryasz, who joined the Association’s sports sciences staff to establish the NCAA drug-testing program a few months after the organization contracted for testing services with the Olympic Analytical Laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The lab was — and still is today — directed by Don Catlin, a medical doctor with an interest in chemistry who was asked by organizers of the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles to oversee testing during that event. Two years later, the NCAA became the UCLA lab’s first non-Olympics client.

"When the NCAA came aboard, that was a big, big step," Catlin says.

It provided work — and funding — for Catlin and his UCLA colleagues, while linking the NCAA to an established testing operation whose staff would continue to track new performance-enhancing drugs through ongoing research. But this was more than a business arrangement. Catlin also wrote the basic sample-collection protocol the NCAA continues to use today and actively consulted with the Association’s staff and drug-testing committees (including today’s Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports) to achieve what he made clear was a common goal.

"Dr. Catlin established early on, when we started working with him and UCLA, that this was a partnership, and not a vendor relationship," said Uryasz, who expanded the partnership in 1999 when he established the National Center for Drug Free Sport, Inc., to conduct testing on behalf of the NCAA.

"The NCAA just wasn’t going to contract with UCLA to analyze urine samples," Uryasz said. "It actually was going to be a partnership where the two organizations were going to work toward the goal of clean and equitable sports."

"We wanted to do business together," Catlin explains. "It’s very important to us. I can’t imagine a better client — not that we haven’t had times over the years that have been stressful, but everybody does. We’re enormously grateful to be part of the program. It’s gone just extremely well."

One important product of the partnership is Carbon Isotope Ratio testing — a method that recently gained worldwide attention for its role in tests of Tour de France champion Floyd Landis and American sprint star Justin Gatlin. UCLA’s Catlin worked with a French laboratory to develop the test, which permits scientists to distinguish between natural and synthetic testosterone. The NCAA purchased equipment for the UCLA lab during the mid-1990s that proved instrumental in the research.

The NCAA has benefited from other UCLA work as well — including discoveries arising from the lab’s instrumental role in the recent BALCO investigation.

"The fact we’re using UCLA’s lab and committed to using (World Anti-Doping Agency)-approved labs — our support and commitment for the lab and our commitment to using the protocol to ensure we’re doing things right — I think we’ve also benefited from some of the things they’re learning because they are a WADA-approved lab," said Mary Wilfert, NCAA assistant director of education outreach.

Catlin’s lab continues to search for new substances while also striving toward perfecting tests for EPO (erythropoietin) and seeking a urine-based test for human growth hormone. Since partnering with the NCAA in 1986, it also has entered into relationships with the National Football League, U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and professional baseball.

"We’re trying to be on top of it every day, kind of like a virus-protection program on your PC," Catlin says of the laboratory’s ongoing efforts. "You’ve got to upgrade every day, and watch and look for the new ones. That’s what we try to do for our clients — knock ’em off as soon as they come out. Because we know as soon as we hit one, it’s over — that’s the first and last time we’ll find it."

But Catlin warns research continues to be the key to moving forward — and he says the lab’s revenues from testing aren’t sufficient to pursue that work effectively. He recently established a research institute to pursue sustained projects, including the continuing search for a growth hormone test.

"We’re at the stage where, OK, we know how to test," he said, assessing the current state of anti-doping efforts in America. "We’ll always be changing, always be adding new drugs, things will be drifting and changing — but we can change with them. We know how to do that.

"But if we really want to advance the cause — if we really want to get the big drugs out of sport forever — we’re going to have to have some serious research, and get it right. And that’s where I’m at today. I’m still doing the testing, but I’m calling the question — let’s get on to research."

Meanwhile, the NCAA remains in important partner in the effort.

"The scientists at UCLA could be doing research in a number of important areas, from cancer research to all kinds of other medical research, but luckily they’ve committed their careers to helping us identify kids who are using performance-enhancing drugs," Uryasz said. "I just can’t stress enough how important that is to the NCAA’s program and, actually, to all of sports in the U.S."