DRUGS IN SPORT:  Dwain Chambers has been warned that the designer anabolic steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) has put his long-term health at risk.

The European 100 metres champion faces a disciplinary hearing next month after testing positive for it last August.

But Dr Olivier Rabin, the science director of the World Anti-Doping Agency, warned yesterday that Chambers could suffer effects beyond the two-year ban he is facing.

"To me it's insane," said Rabin. "This went from the test tube to the athlete. There is a huge risk. Who knows what will happen in the future?

"It is extremely scary that this substance never had any testing on animals before being given to elite athletes, who have in effect acted as guinea pigs.

"A new drug could cause toxic damage to the liver, kidney, brain and blood. That's why drugs go through extensive tests and have to be approved by an ethics committee before being marketed."

Chambers, who has had trials with NFL Europe coaches with a view to pursuing a career in American Football, is one of five athletes to have tested positive for THG, which was allegedly produced by the San Francisco-based Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, currently the subject of a grand jury investigation.

Wada said during a symposium here that it is aware of more steroids designed especially to avoid the current drug-detecting methods and hopes to be able to establish a test for them before the Olympics in Athens.

"One lab has established the presence of a new steroid," said Rabin. "We are working with them to find out more. THG is one example and there may be others. There is at least one that we are investigating and we are tracking other designer steroids."

WADA is also set to challenge the International Association of Athletics Federations if it does not ban Chambers's training partner Kelli White for two years after she tested positive for modafinil.

She faces being stripped of the gold medals she won in the 100 metres and 200 metres at the world championships in Paris last August following a positive test. Under the rules of the IAAF at the time, however, she would not be banned.

The Wada seminar was opened by International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Jacques Rogge who called on governments to fulfil their financial obligations to the international fight against doping by paying their dues to WADA.

The independent Montreal-based body, set up in 1999, is funded jointly by the Olympic movement and national governments. WADA president Dick Pound said the organisation had received only about 25 per cent of its agreed funding for 2003.

Rogge welcomed the decision by the international world soccer governing body FIFA on Wednesday to sign the WADA anti-doping code.

The International Cycling Union is the only major Olympic sporting body yet to sign the code which provides for uniform two-year suspensions for serious doping offence.

"I think it is a very important sign and it strengthens and reinforces the position of the International Olympic Committee that says there is no place in the Games for those who don't want to support the WADA anti-doping convention," Rogge said.

Pound said 87 per cent of Olympic and other recognised sporting federations had accepted the WADA code, which was agreed at a meeting in Copenhagen last March.

He said all sports federations were expected to sign the agreement in time for the Athens Olympics in August and all governments by the 2006 Turin Winter Games. WADA director-general David Howman emphasised the code was flexible and provided for individual federations to vary the sanction according to the substances involved.

Guardian Service