Anti-Doping Research has obtained a copy of meeting notes of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) meeting of March 2000, referenced as “the minutes” in the misleading Jan. 24 Sports Illustrated Lance Armstrong story by Selena Roberts and David Epstein.  Attorneys at Time, Inc. finally provided an excerpt of the notes after repeated requests.

As suspected, the meeting notes are crucial for providing the appropriate context and demonstrate that Roberts and Epstein’s written and press interview statements charging that Dr. Catlin and officials discuss in the meeting how “to informally test athletes-not to sanction them but to help them avoid testing positive at the Olympics” are patently false.  Indeed, the writers and editor(s) either do not understand or willfully ignore the context of the discussion.

The issue was as far from how to help dirty athletes hide at the Olympics as could be.  In fact, the notes show that the committee, with Dr. Catlin often leading the way, was not only trying to do everything it could within the existing International Olympic Committee (IOC) framework to ensure effective doping control, it was trying to find a way to apply more stringent testing standards to American athletes.  The primary issue at hand was how to apply Dr. Catlin’s new, complex, and, at that time, legally untested Carbon Isotope Ratio (CIR) test to confirm testosterone use in U.S. athlete samples prior to the Summer Olympics in Sydney.

“I want to see better and better doping (control),” Dr. Catlin said.  “And it’s (the CIR test is) ready to go… and I submit that there’s tons and tons of political and legal reasons not to do it and to do it.  I’m making a statement that I’m willing to go to court to defend the test, and I wouldn’t have made that statement until very recently.” 

The group was reviewing the rules for screening for testosterone use by applying the testosterone to epitestosterone (T/E) ratio to see how the follow-up CIR confirmation test could be applied.  A key issue discussed was what constituted an initial positive T/E finding.  According to the IOC, the relevant governing body at the time, only a sample with a T/E ratio of 6:1 or higher was an initial positive.  The IOC rules included the ability to use CIR for follow-up testing while the USOC protocol under discussion did not mention CIR use.