As featured in the JanFeb 2008 issue of Running Times Magazine

 

One of the first major international sports doping scandals happened in 1983 at the Pan American Games. It gave the sporting public a graphic view of what, decades later, has mushroomed into one of the most vexing problems faced by sports administrators and athletes. In 1983 Pat Connolly was coaching Evelyn Ashford, who would win the gold medal in the 100 meters in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Back then Ashford was one of the few female athletes who could win against women athletes from East Germany, who it was later proven were aided by a state-sponsored doping program.

Connolly was enraged that because Evelyn beat these "shemales," Ashford was suspected of also being on a doping program. She sought out Dr. Don Catlin, who then was in the process of starting up the Paul Ziffren drug testing laboratory at UCLA to do the testing for the 1984 Games.

Testing for performance-enhancing drugs was in its infancy, just beginning to...