Doping & Drugs ·
The Syringe That Made THG Detectable
An anonymous caller sent USADA a used syringe in June 2003. Don Catlin’s UCLA laboratory identified the designer steroid inside and developed a test that detected it in athlete samples.
On June 6, 2003, the United States Anti-Doping Agency received an overnight delivery containing a used syringe and an unknown clear liquid. The sender had called the day before with a claim: athletes were being supplied with a steroid that drug tests could not detect. USADA sent a portion of the substance to the anti-doping laboratory at UCLA, headed by Dr. Don Catlin.
The caller was anonymous. In its public statement, USADA described the person as someone represented to be a high-profile track and field coach, who had provided the names of American and international athletes he said were using the substance. He also identified Victor Conte of the Bay Area Laboratories Co-Operative, or BALCO, in Burlingame, California, as its source. Those were the caller’s allegations; the syringe gave the laboratory something it could examine directly.
A later BSCG account said Newsweek in 2009 attributed the decision to send the syringe to coach Trevor Graham. USADA’s own accounts kept the caller anonymous.
During the week of June 16, UCLA detected a previously unidentified anabolic steroid, initially called “Compound X.” In early to mid-July, the laboratory identified its molecular structure and named it tetrahydrogestrinone—THG. It also verified that structure using nuclear magnetic resonance. The substance was a designer steroid with a chemical structure similar to other prohibited steroids, but it would not have been detected by normal laboratory testing.
Identifying the liquid was only part of the work. UCLA developed a method to detect THG in athletes’ urine. In mid-July, USADA contacted the Australian National Analytical Reference Laboratory to have THG synthesized for use as a reference material at UCLA. Later that month, it sought independent expert verification of the molecular structure from University of Minnesota chemistry professor Thomas Hoye.
A separate track led to federal authorities. USADA said it contacted the Department of Justice because the caller’s information pointed to potentially illegal activity by the distributor of a controlled substance. Its chronology records a meeting with the department in Washington on August 8, followed on August 19 by a meeting with the Internal Revenue Service and a San Mateo County task force, when USADA was also served a subpoena by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The new test reached beyond the syringe. Samples collected at the June 2003 USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships, as well as samples collected outside competition, produced positive THG test results. UCLA reported on September 23 that five athletes had tested positive. USADA’s public statement described several positive “A” samples and said the athletes and the relevant sporting bodies had been notified.
The caller had described an “undetectable” steroid. By late October 2003, USADA was providing THG reference material to all IOC/WADA-accredited laboratories, while UCLA shared its analytical method. The substance in the syringe now had a name—and laboratories elsewhere had the means to look for it.