Steroids, stimulants, hormones, blood boosters and even insulin have been combined in potentially life-threatening cocktails by elite track athletes, according to evidence collected by U.S. federal investigators.

The lengths to which athletes are prepared to go to gain the extra edge have been documented in chilling detail during the investigation into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO).

As a result, double world sprint champion Kelli White and former Olympic 4x400 relay gold medallist Alvin Harrison have been banned after admitting taking the designer steroid THG (tetrahydrogestrinone).

World 100 metres record holder Tim Montgomery, the partner of triple Olympic gold medallist Marion Jones, has been charged with serious doping violations and BALCO laboratory head Victor Conte said last week he had supplied Jones with THG and the blood booster EPO (erythropoietin).

“I cannot prove this in a court of law but I strongly believe that the large majority of Olympic records and world records established over the last half century have been drug-assisted,” said U.S. researcher Charles Yesalis, in one of a series of interviews with doping experts conducted by Reuters.

“I’ve written for years that there are sports scientists who are sitting like vultures in trees, waiting as new medical discoveries come out of the factories.”

The BALCO investigation started after Trevor Graham, Montgomery’s and Jones’s former coach, sent a syringe containing the previously undetectable THG to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in June last year.

White and Harrison subsequently confessed to taking an extraordinary mix of banned drugs. In addition to THG, the pair apparently used the blood booster EPO (erythropoietin), HGH (human growth hormone), the stimulant modafinil and insulin.

COMMON FACTOR

Don Catlin, the head of the Los Angeles Olympic Analytical Laboratory, which identified THG, believes BALCO is the common factor among the drugs.

“They (the athletes) would change around,” he said. “They would change from one to another. One would be popular for a while and then they would shift to another one.”

The drugs, said Catlin, included a substance colloquially known as “the cream”, a mixture of testosterone and another hormone, epitesterone.

Testosterone, which increases muscle strength and bulk, is assumed to be artificially administered if the ratio with epitesterone is greater than six to one.

“These guys designed a cream that you could use, slather it on your arms, legs and chest and it had a ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone of around 20 to one,” said Catlin.

“The average person has a one-to-one ratio. If that person takes testosterone and suddenly their testosterone goes from one to 100 and their epitestosterone goes from one to 100, the ratio is still one.

“Now they have 100 times more testosterone. That’s what they were doing. Very clever.”

EPO has been commonly associated with endurance event athletes, such as cyclists, cross-country skiers and long-distance runners. The evidence collected in the BALCO inquiry now suggests it is being used by sprinters.

“Everyone is now using EPO,” said Catlin. “It has clearly moved into the short-distance sprints.”

SLEEPING SICKNESS

Vivian James, a British professor of chemical pathology, said there was no reason that EPO should not aid sprinters as well as distance runners. “It increases the number of red blood cells,” he said. “For a sprinter that’s just as important as for a cyclist or a long-distance runner.”

Modafinil had barely registered with anti-doping authorities until White tested positive at last year’s Paris world championships.

She said she had suffered from the sleeping sickness narcolepsy, a claim treated with the scepticism it was shown to have deserved this year when she accepted a two-year ban in return for confessing to using a range of drugs.

“Drugs that fight fatigue are useful in certain sporting events like sprinting,” said Catlin. “I think it follows that any drug that is going to work for narcolepsy is going to be tried for athletes.

“Modafinil is new to sport but is has been around for years…suddenly there were a lot of people with narcolepsy. There was an epidemic.”

Because HGH is produced by the body, a test has been difficult to devise although one was finally developed for this year’s Athens Olympics.

“They alter the body’s metabolism,” said Catlin. “Muscles do get bigger.”

Then there is insulin, potentially the most scary drug being misused by unscrupulous athletes. A hormone secreted by the pancreas, it helps to absorb sugar from the bloodstream.

“It affects your growth hormone production and you can’t test for it,” said Yesalis.

SIDE EFFECTS

James believes there are athletes prepared to take a variety of widely different drugs at the same time. “There are always people prepared to take the risk,” he said.

So does sports medicine doctor Gary Walder, a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

“Poly-drug abuse is very, very common,” Walder said. “We particularly used to see it in the ‘90s, in the ‘80s, with anabolic steroids. It was called stacking.

“To see that athletes are using a multiplicity of substances certainly would come as no surprise at all.”

What about the long-term effects of these various drugs?

Catlin said HGH had “a number of side effects that are not good for the normal person. The heart gets big, eventually the hands get big and clothes don’t fit.”

James added: “You get irreversible bone growth.”

And insulin?

“It’s called death if you overdose with insulin,” said Yesalis. “That’s no secret.”