Drug Dispute Might Alter Suspensions : Clenbuterol: Logan and Dasse could benefit from experts’ differences on whether stimulant also has anabolic effects.

Two U.S. track and field athletes who were suspended for four years after testing positive for a banned substance during the Summer Olympics at Barcelona have been encouraged because of a dispute over whether the drug they used in training should be classified as an anabolic steroid.

Buoyed by the recent lifting of suspensions against two British weightlifters, throwers Jud Logan of North Canton, Ohio, and Bonnie Dasse of Costa Mesa are awaiting the outcome of a hearing next week involving two German athletes who also tested positive for the drug. One of them is world champion sprinter Katrin Krabbe.

“There are a lot of factors that have started turning things our way,” said Logan, whose fourth-place finish at Barcelona was the highest for a U.S. hammer thrower in the Olympics since 1956. Dasse is a shotputter who did not qualify for the finals in the Olympics.

The drug in question, clenbuterol, is an asthma medication that was put on the International Olympic Committee’s banned list earlier this year after experts reported an increase in use by athletes.

One member of the IOC’s medical sub-commission, Dr. Don Catlin of UCLA’s analytical laboratory, called the drug a “doper’s delight” because, he said, it acted as both an anabolic--muscle enhancing--agent and a stimulant.

Anabolics and stimulants are banned by the IOC and other sports governing bodies, but the penalty for anabolics is much more severe.

The British weightlifters, Andrew Saxton and Andrew Davies, were sent home from Barcelona before the Olympics began, facing possible lifetime suspensions by the British Amateur Weight Lifting Assn., after it was discovered in out-of-competition testing that they had traces of clenbuterol in their systems.

The German Athletics Federation subsequently announced that Krabbe and Grit Breuer had been found guilty of the same offense in out-of-competition testing and would be suspended for four years.

But British weightlifting officials reinstated Saxton and Davies after a hearing earlier this month. Testifying for the weightlifters was Arnold Beckett, a member of the IOC medical sub-commission from Great Britain, who said that clenbuterol does not have anabolic properties and, as a stimulant, should not be banned for out-of-competition testing.

Beckett also is aiding in the defense of Krabbe and Breuer, whose appeal before the German Athletics Federation is scheduled for next week.

Bryan Wotton, doping control officer for the International Amateur Athletic Federation, which governs track and field, said that Beckett is at odds with members of the IAAF’s medical commission, and also with his colleagues on the IOC’s medical sub-commission, regarding clenbuterol.

But Wotton conceded that Beckett has support from drug-testing experts outside those official bodies and said that the IAAF’s medical commission probably will add the subject of clenbuterol to its agenda for a regularly scheduled meeting this weekend at London.

The IAAF does not have jurisdiction in the case against Krabbe and Breuer because they were suspended by the German federation. But Logan and Dasse were suspended by the IAAF because they tested positive during international competition. If the IAAF sides with Beckett and rules that clenbuterol should be classified only as a stimulant, the throwers’ suspensions could be reduced from four years to three months.

Logan and Dasse said they plan to collect as much information as possible before applying for reinstatement. “It will make it a lot easier if we have some precedents,” Logan said. “Each one is like a shot in the arm.”

Logan, 33, said that he used clenbuterol for four or five months to counter exercise-induced asthma but quit after learning in February that the drug had been put on the U.S. Olympic Committee’s banned list. Although experts contend that it is not likely that traces of the drug will remain in the system over a period of several months, they say that it is possible.

“It’s a mystery, but I’m not going to deny that there were traces of clenbuterol in my system,” Logan said. “I am denying that it was intended for use as an anabolic steroid.”

Unlike Logan, Dasse, 33, said that she was not aware that the drug was on the banned list. She blamed herself for not calling the USOC’s drug hotline. She also accepted responsibility for taking the drug within three days of her competition at Barcelona. She had been using it in training for two months as a stimulant.

“I took it too close to the competition,” she said. “I don’t have a problem taking the blame for my mistake.

“But I am adamantly opposed to a four-year suspension. Clenbuterol clearly has stimulant effects. But people who say that it has anabolic properties are totally off.”