WORLD SPORTS SCENE / RANDY HARVEY : USOC Official Says Alzado’s Effort Helped

Before he spoke at the U.S. Olympic Committee media seminar Thursday at Colorado Springs, Colo., Dr. Wade Exum, the USOC’s drug control director, requested a moment of silence in honor of Lyle Alzado.

Alzado, who died earlier that day at age 43 because of brain cancer, had no connection with the Olympics, but Exum said that the movement owes a debt of gratitude to the former professional football player for his crusade in the last year of his life against the use by athletes of anabolic steroids.

Alzado believed that he was vulnerable to the disease because of the deterioration of his immune system, which he blamed on more than 20 years of steroid abuse.

“There’s no way to say yes or no to whether his death was caused by steroids,” Exum said. “But the important thing is that he believed it, and, from our standpoint, we agree that steroids can cause erosion of your immune system. He was a sincere and effective spokesman for that position.”

Exum said that he fears there will be others.

“Over the next five to 10 years, I’m afraid more athletes are going to step forward and say, ‘I used to be a hulk; now look at what I’ve become.’ ”

Exum said steroid positives in USOC testing have decreased each year since the program began, from a high of 3.6% in 1984 to a low of 0.7% last year. He said that he prefers to believe that the USOC’s education program is responsible for the decline, but he acknowledged that it might also be because athletes are wiser in the ways of beating the tests.

The bilateral U.S.-Soviet drug-testing agreement is one victim of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Exum said that the USOC has tried to revive it through contacts with Russia’s Olympic Committee.

U.S. Swimming last week became the eighth national governing body to join the USOC’s random-testing program.

Six Bulgarian weightlifters and a gymnast recently tested positive for a diuretic, the same banned substance that brought down the Bulgarian weightlifting team four years ago at Seoul. Moments before the gymnast’s “B” sample was tested, her coach fainted, falling into the lab analyst and causing him to drop the beaker. But the lab analyst had a “C” sample and the gymnast was suspended.

Michael Johnson, ranked No. 1 in the world in the 200 and 400 meters the last two years, is concerned about the apparent procedural violations in the drug test two years ago that resulted in Butch Reynolds’ suspension.

“That’s something that scares me to death,” he said.

Johnson knows something about the case because he and Reynolds have the same manager, Brad Hunt.

Johnson said last week that he will wait until after track and field’s Olympic trials next month at New Orleans to decide whether to run the 200 or the 400 at Barcelona. If the schedule is changed to accommodate him, he could even run both. But he said he already has decided that in 1996 at Atlanta, he will try to win gold medals in the 200, 400 and both relays. “I’m going to start running some 100s in the near future,” he said.

Reynolds, despite acknowledgment from the U.S. track and field governing body that his positive test for a steroid should be overturned because of the procedural violations, lost his final appeal to the IAAF, the international governing body, last week after only two hours of deliberation.

Adding to the suspicion that Reynolds failed to receive a fair hearing was the three-member appeal panel’s announcement, even before it met, that the deliberation would take only two hours.

“Impossible,” Cliff Wylie, a member of the national appeals panel that exonerated Reynolds, told USA Today. “How could they have deciphered all that? It took us hours to sift through the maze of information.”

Reynolds is expected to file suit in federal court this week against the IAAF. Even if he loses, ending his chances to compete in the Summer Olympics, he is eligible to resume competition on Aug. 12. Seven days later, he says there will be a lane waiting for him in a meet at Zurich, where he set the world record in the 400 meters in 1988.

IAAF meetings this week at Toronto are expected to determine whether South Africa is readmitted to the Olympics in track and field and whether German sprinter Katrin Krabbe’s appeal of a drug suspension is successful.

On Summer Sanders’ decision last week to leave Stanford with two years of eligibility remaining because NCAA rules don’t allow her to accept endorsement and sponsorship money, her Olympic teammate, Crissy Ahmann-Leighton of Arizona, says: “In 10 years, swimming in college is going to be a joke. All the good swimmers are going to want to be in a club situation so that they can make money because that’s where the sport is headed.”

Another U.S. swimmer, Melvin Stewart, added: “The NCAA is choking the life out of college athletics.”

Unless injuries force other roster changes, Christian Laettner of Duke will be the only collegian on the U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team. He should expect some hazing from the other 11 players.

“He’ll be the strongest guy in the NBA next year because he’s got to carry 11 other guys’ luggage this summer,” said Charles Barkley, one of the NBA’s Olympians.

Appearing at the USOC media seminar, Coach Chuck Daly said he’s not as concerned about the melding the players into a team on the court as much as off the court.

“I spoke to Magic Johnson last fall, and he suggested that we need to do things off the court together, like bowling or golf,” Daly said. “He said, ‘We’ve got to heal the wounds.’ If you’ve watched Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing jawing at each other in the playoffs, you know what he means.”