The Enforcer

Author/scientist Caroline Hatton talks about doping in sports in her book The Night Olympic Team (Boyds Mills, 2008).

What was it like being a member of the Night Olympic Team?

Every night behind the closed doors of the lab, my job, along with a few others, was to make darn sure that test results were correct... by trying to shoot them down.

How stressful was it?

The highest stress at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City was having to decide whether or not to report NESP [a substance that stimulates production of red blood cells] positives for the first time ever.

What was it like to discover NESP in an athlete’s urine?

When the lab director, Dr. Don Catlin, handed me a printed image and my brain cells grasped what it meant, it was quite an adrenaline jolt because it was not only the first time that NESP might be reported, but it was also at the Olympics!

Any way the Beijing Olympics can be drug free?

The escalation of new drugs as doping agents has accelerated for years and made it a growing challenge for drug testers to keep up. We’ll never catch every single cheater, but we have room to cramp the style of dopers and have a reasonably drug-free Olympics.