U.S. Olympians worry about drug tests

OAKLAND, Calif., June 7 (UPI) -- The possibility that circumstantial evidence could bar a few star U.S. athletes from competing in Athens this summer has emerged as a key pre-Olympics drama.

The United States Anti-Doping Agency says it will not ban athletes for what are called "nonanalytical positives," the Christian Science Monitor reported Monday.

But the agency's pursuit of a dozen elite U.S. athletes linked to a sophisticated California lab, which allegedly made designer drugs that cannot be detected, has observers wondering.

In fact, some have gone from wondering to worrying.

One of the world's top sprinters has seen enough to threaten litigation if she is barred from competing in the Summer Olympics based on nonalalytical positives.

"I'm not going to let somebody take away my livelihood because of a hunch," Marion Jones said recently.

Some legal experts agree the agency may be pushing too hard in its attempt to clean up the reputation of U.S. Olympians for secretly using non-detectable performance-enhancing drugs.

"Nonanalytical positive has to be credible evidence," says James Coleman, a professor at Duke School of Law in Durham, N.C., who helped craft USA Track & Field's drug-testing program.