USE OF SUPPLEMENTS COULD LEAD TO POSITIVE STEROID TESTS!
According to a report in a USA Today, January 31, 2000, using certain food supplements could result in athletes testing positive for steroids. The report is as follows:
Contaminated food supplements could be responsible for the rash of positive tests for the banned steroid nandrolone, according to Prof. Wilhelm Schaencer, head of the international Olympic Committee laboratory in Cologne, Germany. Schaencer carries out tests on about 100 different supplements and found 16 that included substances that would have led to adverse nandrolone findings. "The data we have gathered over the last two years clearly indicates that the nutritional supplements can be cross-contaminated by pro-hormones, which the body metabolizes to create nandrolone," Schaencer said. The research team investigated products from Europe and the USA, none of which include nandrolone or related compounds among the listed ingredients. Olympics laboratories recorded 343 positive tests for nandrolone in 1999, the last year for which figures are available.
*******
The question now becomes what legal challenges the IOC will have to face in light of the fact that they have banned athletes for failing drug tests, but now cannot say for certain that the results of these tests were not false positives.