LONDON, 2 February 2005 — Sports scientists have discovered a second, highly sophisticated steroid especially designed to evade drug-testers, anti-doping officials said yesterday.

“Following the THG story, this is the second designer steroid we have found,” World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) scientific director Olivier Rabin said from Montreal.

“We believe this was created purely for doping in sport.”

Rabin said the substance, desoxy-methyl-testosterone (DMT), was discovered after an anonymous tipoff and that it could be identified by anti-doping laboratories. It was among substances seized by Canadian customs at the Canada-US border last year.

Several leading track athletes, including double world sprint champion Kelli White and Britain’s European 100 metres champion Dwain Chambers, were banned after THG (tetrahyrogestrinone) was discovered in 2003.

Head of WADA’s accredited doping control laboratory in Montreal, Professor Christiane Ayotte, said DMT - which aims to artificially boost strength and stamina - was the most sophisticated substance yet discovered by testers. “THG was a modification of gestrinone... a modification by a simple one-step reaction,” she said.

“But in this case we know, because we exactly reproduced the way they made this product, that it is at a level of sophistication that we have not seen before.

“We now have chemists with a very serious organic chemistry background helping these people distribute these things to athletes.”

Ayotte said she was confident the new steroid had not yet been used by athletes in competition after tests on thousands of stored samples drew a blank.

“There was a seizure of several bottles. One of them contained this designer steroid,” she said.

“At the same time an informant contacted WADA to tell them there had been such a seizure. So Olivier Rabin contacted Canadian Customs and we came together to work on this.”

WADA said it had not been able to identify the source of the tip-off as all information had been passed via anonymous e-mail.

THG, in a syringe, was sent anonymously to American anti-doping officials in June 2003.

A test was developed secretly, trapping several top athletes and triggering an international doping scandal.

Trevor Graham, the coach of Olympic 100 metres champion Justin Gatlin, subsequently admitted during the Athens Olympics last year that he had sent the syringe of THG.