Steroids, Commission Testing and Revisionist History

Zach Arnold passed along some quotes from Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Association, which are making the rounds through the blogosphere as evidence of state athletic commissions failures to adequately test for steroids. While there are clearly problems with state athletic commissions testing policies Tygart presented a nice bit of revisionist history regarding Shane Mosley and his positive steroid test as anecdotal evidence:

Q: Shane Mosley obviously slipped through some cracks on urine testing alone in Nevada. ...

A: "Let me correct that premise for you. The current state of drug testing done by these state commissions is a joke. They don't test for EPO. They don't test for designer steroids. They test for a basic, simple menu that anybody with a heartbeat will escape. I just hate to hear that Shane Mosley did something really sophisticated to get around their testing. No, he didn't. He would've been caught dead to rights in our program. But it doesn't take a whole lot to sidestep the simple kind of drug testing that these state commissions are doing.

Actually, Shane Mosley did do something really sophisticated. Mosley took the infamous "clear" and the "cream" steroids produced by BALCO in 2003 prior to his title fight with Oscar de la Hoya.

In reality the "clear" acts as the anabolic steroid while the "cream"acts as a masking agent. The "clear" is actually a steroid called THG, tetrahydrogestrinone, which was unknown to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency until June of 2003, when track coach Trever Graham anonymously mailed a syringe of THG to the Doping Agency.

If we are to believe what Travis Tygart is saying now in 2010, the Agency was able to identify how THG works, design a test for THG and disseminate that information to the state athletic commissions in time for Mosley's September fight. That sounds a little far-fetched.

Tygart is also ignoring the purpose of BALCO's steroids, which were designed to beat normal testing.

Experts say using "the cream" and "the clear" in tandem would make for a powerful and effective steroid cocktail. Both were designed to be undetectable in standard drug tests. THG, a clear liquid taken in droplets under the tongue, likely would have all of the effects of any anabolic steroid, promoting muscle growth, acne, deepening of the voice, breast expansion in men, breast shrinkage in women.

According to a federal affidavit connected to the BALCO case, "the cream" was a mixture of testosterone and epitestosterone designed to increase the body's level of the natural steroid testosterone while not raising flags in traditional drug tests, which measure the ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone. Bowers speculated that "the cream" might have been used by athletes largely to mask the use of other steroids.

There are clearly issues with the current model of state athletic commission drug testing and Tygart is clearly in the right in advocating reform for better testing within the system to focus of designer steroids, like the ones Mosley took, and EPO.