THE LATEST move in the battle against drugs cheats was announced here yesterday, when plans for an athlete's passport were revealed, an attempt by the sport to avoid expensive legal battles.
Last year, the International Amateur Athletic Federation estimated that litigation over disputed drug tests cost it and its member federations at least $24 million. Now with $20 million in prize money to be available at the IAAF's various events in 1997, the organisation is to demand that the top 20, athletes in each event register for a programme of out of competition drugs testing in order to qualify to receive prizes.
The passport is a development of the contract introduced before last summer's Olympic Games, which bond competitors to accept a fast track appeals procedure and to abandon their normal legal rights. It amounts to a professional contract, and would allow the IAAF to broaden the scope of its drug tests.
One innovation which leading drug testers are known to favour is steroid profiling, effectively taking a "fingerprint" of the competitor's naturally occurring hormone levels. Any variation might be investigated. Such a system is believed to be more legally defendable means of prosecuting cases of cheating.
Primo Nebiolo, the president of the IAAF, explaining the new system and the possibility of suspicion surrounding unranked athletes who make startling and rapid improvement, said: "If someone who is not ranked in the top 20 at the beginning of next year wins a gold medal at our world championships in Athens, then we will congratulate them and pay them the money. But they must know that we will be testing them far more often than anyone else in the future."
Nebiolo announced that the first IAAF event to pay prize money will be the world indoor championships in Paris next March, which will also offer world record bonuses of $50,000. Had such a system existed at last summer's Olympic games, Michael Johnson and Svetlana Masterkova would have both won at least 200,000 in addition to their two gold medals, while Donovan Bailey could have banked a similar amount after winning the 100 metres in a world record time.
Last night, the three were honoured with special awards at the International Athletic Foundation annual gala dinner.
