HOUSTON, 14 November 2003 — The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has added its name to the growing list of sporting bodies that will begin testing for the new designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG).
The association said on Wednesday it would meet with representatives from the UCLA laboratory testing samples of student athletes, the Center for Drug Free Sport and the NCAA Committee for Competitive Safeguards to work out details.
“The NCAA will begin testing for THG,” spokesperson Kay Hawes told Reuters.
“Right now we are in discussion with those groups on the details.”
A steroid tweaked by chemists to make it previously undetectable under normal test conditions, THG is at the heart of an escalating doping scandal that has rocked the sports world.
Last month Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer added THG to their list of banned substances as American sports leagues intensified their fight against the designer steroid.
An association of about 1,200 colleges and universities, athletic conferences and sports organizations, the NCAA governs some of the United States biggest sporting events and conducts 10,500 drug tests on student athletes each year.
However, unlike athletics world governing body the IAAF and swimming’s governing organization FINA, the association does not plan to retest samples from past championships. “We have a year-round testing program and a championship testing program,” Hawes said.
