Tragic teenager illustrates steroids culture

Taylor Hooton was a month past his 17th birthday when he buckled two belts together, fastened one end to his bedroom door, wrapped the other round his neck and hanged himself.

An autopsy after Hooton's suicide on July 15 revealed the presence of the steroids 19-norandrosterone and 19-noretiocholanolone in his system.

Hooton, an aspiring baseball pitcher described as a popular and ebullient student at the Texas college of Plano West north of Dallas, had taken steroids to build himself up and compete more effectively in his senior year,

The drugs worked. In three months Hooton put on 12 kgs. But he also experienced the sudden mood switches consistent with steroid abuse, alternating euphoric highs, violent aggression and ultimately the severe depression which led to him taking his life.

His father Don, who with his mother Gwen has devoted himself to campaigning against steroids in schools and who has set up his own Web site (www.taylorhooton.org), says steroid use among teenagers is tied up with the American dream.

"They're doing it to succeed because they think it might help them to set up a scholarship," he said. "Taylor was a top-notch student. He, like so many, was doing it because it might make him better."

The tragic tale underscores the forbidding obstacles facing the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in its never-ending fight for drug-free sport only eight months out from the Beijing Olympics.

Balco Victim

In 2007, the Balco laboratory scandal claimed its biggest victim.

Marion Jones, the triple Sydney Olympic gold medallist, finally admitted after years of denial that she had taken Balco's most potent steroid tetrahydrogestrinone. Jones used the so-called 'clear', specifically designed to fool testers, before her 2000 triumphs.

Jones, the heir to Carl Lewis as the world's leading sprinter and long jumper, broke down in tears at a news conference in which she confessed to drug abuse.

Her audience, many of whom had not trusted anything she said about drugs after her then husband CJ Hunter revealed in Sydney that he had tested positive for huge amounts of nandrolone four times during 2000, remained dry-eyed. She was subsequently stripped of the record five track and field medals she won in Sydney and accepted a two-year ban.

Last month baseball slugger Barry Bonds, the 43-year-old record holder for home runs and, with Jones, Balco's most high-profile client, was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. Bonds pleaded not guilty at a hearing on December 7 with the next hearing scheduled for Febraury 7.

"During the criminal investigation, evidence was obtained including positive tests for the presence of anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing substances for Bonds and other professional athletes," said the indictment, filed in the U.S. district court in San Francisco.

In August, Bonds, broke Hank Aaron's home run record of 755 set in 1974 to a rapturous reception by San Francisco Giants fans and a mixture of outrage and indifference elsewhere.

No athlete, not even Ben Johnson who was at the centre of the biggest scandal in Olympic history when he tested positive at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, has changed shape as dramatically as Bonds, now unrecognisable as the slim youth who first made his name with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Mitchell Report

Bonds has admitted using substances produced by Balco but always denied any knowledge that they might have been prohibited. His personal trainer Greg Anderson had been jailed on steroid distribution charges and, after his release, was sent back to prison for declining to co-operate in the Bonds investigation.

A report by former Senate majority leader George Mitchell this month named Bonds and former New York Yankee Roger Clemens, his league's top pitcher for a record seven times, as steroid users. "For more than a decade there has been widespread anabolic steroid use," Mitchell told a news conference. "Everybody in baseball shares responsibility."

Another American, cyclist Floyd Landis, was banned from his sport for two years in September after a French laboratory found traces of synthetic testosterone in a sample he provided during the 2006 Tour de France. Landis was the first rider to be stripped of the Tour title.

An unprecedented spate of doping scandals in an already tarnished sport led last month to one of the oldest sponsors, Deutsche Telekom, ending its support of team T-Mobile in order "to separate our brand from further exposure from doping in sport and cycling specifically".

T-Mobile had embraced a policy of zero tolerance, sacking German Patrik Sinkewitz and Italy's Lorenzo Bernucci following positive dope tests and dismissing Ukrainian rider Serhiy Honchar for breach of conduct.

The company's withdrawal came a month after the International Cycling Union (UCI) and WADA announced the creation of the toughest anti-doping measures in sport, taking blood samples from all professional riders next year to create medical profiles which can then be checked after doping tests.

Former Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis admitted he had used doping during his victorious ride in 1996 and fellow Dane Michael Rasmussen was sacked by his Rabobank team as he led this year's Tour for lying about his training programme.

Kazakh Alexander Vinokourov was found guilty of blood doping during the race. He and his Astana team were expelled and Vinokourov retired after he was suspended for a year.

The Cofidis team pulled out of the Tour after Cristian Moreni tested positive for excessive testosterone while Erik Zabel, who had won a record six green jerseys on the tour, also admitted to doping.

Last month WADA had their first change of president when the outspoken Canadian Dick Pound, who had headed the agency since its inception in 1999, was succeeded by former Australian Finance Minister John Fahey.

Pound had his critics. His flair for the eye-catching phrase and his criticism at various times of USA Track & Field, the National Hockey League and cycling led to a reprimand from the International Olympic Committee.

It could equally be argued that some plain speaking on the cancer of drugs was just what international sport needed.