Slaney’s Attorney Confirms Drug Probe

The star-crossed career of Mary Slaney took another strange twist Thursday when her lawyer confirmed that the most prominent distance runner in U.S. history was being investigated for possible drug use at the Olympic trials.

The lawyer denied that Slaney used drugs and said she had passed three random tests since high levels of the male hormone testosterone were found in her system at the Atlanta meet last June.

Doriane Lambelet Coleman, a Duke law professor, also criticized track officials for letting the investigation drag on for almost a year and said information about the case may have been leaked as part of a personal grudge against the runner.

“Somebody was afraid this was going to go away,” Coleman said.

If Slaney, 38, were found to have used performanceenhancing drugs, she would be banned from running for four years and could be stripped of all her results since the initial test. That would include her place on her fourth Olympic team and her second-place finish at the World Indoor Track Championships last March.

It would be another setback in a career filled with world championships, serious injuries and wasted chances, one best remembered for a spill in the 3,000-meter finals at the 1984 Olympics, after tangling legs with barefoot rival Zola Budd.

In Atlanta last June, Slaney’s urine sample showed levels of strength-building testosterone above the allowable limits, Coleman said.

Because testosterone is a natural substance, higher-than-normal levels in a drug test do not automatically trigger a positive result. Instead, the rules call for an investigation to determine if the finding is the result of the body’s natural processes or an effort to cheat.

Coleman said Slaney had subsequently been tested at random by the U.S. Olympic Committee three times and passed each of those outof-competition tests.