海角大神

The back lot behind Barry鈥檚 Plumbing doesn鈥檛 look like a fitting place for one of sport鈥檚 greatest sleuths to set up shop. The narrow alleyway is unmarked, as is the plain brick building 鈥� a former clothing manufacturing shop. Google Maps will not get you here.

But then again, fame and fancy office space aren鈥檛 what Don Catlin is after. It鈥檚 illegal performance-
enhancing drugs he鈥檚 targeting.

Antidoping czars plead for his help. Dopers dread it. His team was, after all, the one that cracked the designer steroid at the heart of the California BALCO scandal 鈥� arguably the biggest doping ring unearthed since East Germany鈥檚 program, involving more than a dozen athletes including track star Marion Jones and baseball giant Barry Bonds.

鈥淸Chief BALCO investigator] Jeff [Novitsky] called me one day,鈥� recalls Dr. Catlin, chuckling. 鈥淗e鈥檚 reading me an e-mail that he lifted from somewhere and it said something like, 鈥楥atlin鈥檚 on to it [the drug]. Better move to another one.鈥欌��

One of the world鈥檚 most respected names in the science of doping, Catlin spent 25 years pioneering a global antidoping model in the Olympic lab at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). He oversaw the Olympic drug-testing labs at the 1984, 1996, and 2002 Games, and is playing a supporting role in Beijing.

Still, despite his success as one of the cleverest cats in a Tom-and-Jerry pursuit of dopers, Catlin has become convinced that the paradigm on which he based his work for two decades is faulty: It鈥檚 the clean athletes 鈥� not the dirty ones 鈥� who deserve his services.

鈥⑩赌⑩赌�

It all started when a coach burst into Catlin鈥檚 office nearly three decades ago. US sprinter Evelyn Ashford, a medal favorite for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, was drawing suspicions of doping because she was beating East German 鈥渟he-males.鈥� Pat Connolly was in his doorway, begging him to prove them wrong.

鈥淲hat she wanted me to do was test Evelyn and stand up and say, 鈥楽he鈥檚 clean,鈥� 鈥� says Catlin, who was then setting up a drug-testing lab for the Games. 鈥淪he didn鈥檛 really understand how complex that would be to actually execute it.鈥�

In fact, drug testing was so primitive then that Catlin couldn鈥檛 even detect a steroid he had knowingly taken as an experiment. Now he and fellow researchers worldwide have developed a sophisticated battery of tests for dozens of drugs. One can even prove that an athlete doped without needing to know what drug was used.

Yet even with all this savvy, the sports world is in something of a nuclear arms race. Almost as quickly as scientists can devise new tests, pharmaceutical companies pump out new drugs that dopers can abuse 鈥� or that allied chemists can tweak to foil current tests.

鈥淪ometimes you can add a hydrogen or carbon molecule that would modify the weight of the product, and then you can鈥檛 scan for it,鈥� says Sabrina Benchaar, whom Catlin hired in April at his new firm, Anti-Doping Research (ADR).

Dr. Benchaar鈥檚 current project shows how difficult the task can be. She is trying to develop a way to detect human growth hormone (HGH) in urine samples. Though the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has piloted a blood test for HGH, two of the biggest professional sports organizations 鈥� Major League Baseball and the National Football League 鈥� have said they鈥檙e waiting for more scientific validation, and players鈥� unions have opposed blood testing. If researchers could develop a foolproof HGH urine test, it could do much to clean up the dugout and the sidelines.

It isn鈥檛 just a matter of slipping a slide under a microscope. Human urine contains more than 1,500 proteins. Even Catlin admits the HGH test 鈥渋s probably the most difficult test in this whole field.鈥� Benchaar, however, is convinced it can be done 鈥� maybe even in six months. She describes the intricate work of one of the lab鈥檚 machines, a $1 million 鈥淥rbitrap,鈥� that dissects chains of amino acids as if throwing a pearl necklace at a wall. The smaller strands, or 鈥減earls,鈥� can then be identified and synthetic proteins singled out.

In contrast to HGH testing, the process for detecting known steroids and amphetamines is far more developed and precise. It begins with an official collecting urine samples from athletes at competitions or on surprise visits, and marking them with anonymous codes.

When samples arrive at the lab, researchers submit them to rigorous chemical testing, ultimately producing printouts that look like saw-toothed mountain ranges. If the 鈥渞idge鈥� lines match up with those of a known drug, then it鈥檚 considered a positive.

More subjective is the urine test for the endurance-booster EPO. Catlin scrolls through images on his computer that look like X-rays of rattlesnake tails. Standing behind his chair, Dr. Caroline Hatton 鈥� his quality-control czarina for more than two decades 鈥� explains how technicians evaluate the darkness of the strips, comparing them with samples known to contain EPO and with ones that don鈥檛. But it鈥檚 still an imperfect science. In June, a Danish study revealed that two different WADA-accredited labs 鈥� one of which faulted the study鈥檚 methodology 鈥� came up with different results for the same samples, adding to the debate over EPO testing.

All this is expensive, too. Catlin estimates that it cost as much as $500,000 for his team to develop a test for the BALCO steroid THG. Machines start at $80,000. To thoroughly vet one athlete once can run up to $2,000.

And there can be glitches. Some drugs become undetectable even as they continue enhancing performance. Athletes have found bizarre ways to hide clean samples and provide them in place of their own. They can also wet a finger with an enzyme that breaks down drugs, and let it run into their sample. Catlin suspects that may be why Marion Jones鈥檚 A sample was a 鈥渇laming positive鈥� for EPO while her B sample, taken at the same time but tested later, was a 鈥渇lat negative.鈥�

After 25 years of testing, Catlin has come to the conclusion that 鈥渟cience can鈥檛 solve all the problems. For me 鈥� who ... believed we could do it just with doping control and testing 鈥� to say it鈥檚 not working is a bit of a change.鈥�

鈥⑩赌⑩赌�

By most measures, Catlin has every right to hang up his beakers and spend his days biking up the dirt tracks near his mountain home. But he remains as devoted to his work today as he has been in the past. When his wife passed on in 1989, he got up at 3 a.m. daily, returning home midafternoon to raise his teenage boys.

鈥淗e鈥檚 never been in this for sport,鈥� says son Oliver, now vice president of ADR. 鈥淗e鈥檚 really in it to build that integrity.鈥�

Now freed from the task of administering UCLA鈥橲 50,000 annual drug tests, Catlin is settling in at ADR to do what he loves: 鈥渢inker with ideas.鈥� And his favorite one goes back to Ms. Ashford, the sprinter: What鈥檚 being done for clean athletes? 鈥淚鈥檝e always felt that we put too much emphasis on dirty athletes and too much money into finding the last little molecule of some abstruse drug somewhere,鈥� he says. 鈥淓ver since [Ashford], I鈥檝e had it in mind to try to find ways to do things for athletes who really care.鈥�

So for the past decade, he鈥檚 been fine-tuning his 鈥淰olunteer Program.鈥� It would turn the tables on doping, putting the onus on athletes to prove they鈥檙e clean rather than on scientists to prove they鈥檙e dirty. Athletes would be tested often, yielding a biological profile. Over time, if testing revealed a spike in values that the athlete could not explain, he or she would be dropped from the program.

Several similar initiatives have cropped up recently, including one run by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in the run-up to Beijing. USADA chief Travis Tygart credits Catlin. 鈥淒on has been instrumental in not only the pilot testing program, but where things are in antidoping today,鈥� he says.

While Catlin lauds Mr. Tygart鈥檚 pilot program, he鈥檚 concerned that overall the antidoping establishment is too busy defending its system 鈥� 鈥渁 lot of PR, handwaving鈥� 鈥� to ask whether it鈥檚 the right model for success. But he鈥檚 optimistic that sports can be cleaned up 鈥� somehow: 鈥淐an we achieve it with what we鈥檙e trying to do? I鈥檓 not sure, but I hope so. I鈥檝e built my life on it.鈥�

鈥� Previous installments in this series ran July 14, 21, and 28.