Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

U.S. Antidoping Agency Seeks to Depose Doctor Who Treated Top Track Athletes

The endocrinologist Jeffrey S. Brown in 2013. A court filing said the United States Anti-Doping Agency had information that individuals had traveled long distances to be treated by Dr. Brown in an attempt to enhance athletic performance.Credit...Eric Kayne

The United States Anti-Doping Agency has filed a court action in Houston seeking to compel a deposition from an endocrinologist being investigated for possibly providing banned substances to track and field athletes.

The activities of the endocrinologist, Jeffrey S. Brown, are being examined as part of a continuing investigation by Usada of the prominent Nike Oregon Project coach Alberto Salazar, a person familiar with the investigation said Tuesday, on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

“While we don’t comment on the specifics of any investigation, as always Usada’s actions are solely focused on the pursuit of the truth and doing what is best to protect the rights of clean athletes and the integrity of competition,” Ryan Madden, a Usada spokesman, said in a statement.

Dr. Brown could not be reached Tuesday evening. In an email, Mr. Salazar denied any wrongdoing.

“I believe in a clean sport and a methodical, dedicated approach to training,” Mr. Salazar wrote. “The Oregon Project will never permit doping.”

Mr. Salazar said that he had not heard from the antidoping agency despite voluntarily meeting with officials more than six months ago.

“I look forward to this unfair and protracted process reaching the conclusion I know to be true,” he wrote.

Image
Alberto Salazar, right, with Galen Rupp at the United States championships last June. The same month, in an open letter, Mr. Salazar denied any wrongdoing and said, “I will never permit doping.”Credit...Ryan Kang/Associated Press

The court filing by Usada was made on June 23, a week before the United States Olympic track and field trials in Eugene, Ore. The event will determine which athletes compete for the United States at the Rio Games in August.

The filing, made in district court in Harris County, Tex., said Usada had information that individuals – presumed to be athletes — had traveled long distances to be treated by Dr. Brown in an attempt to enhance athletic performance, which “raises questions about whether some of these treatments may have violated sport anti-doping rules.”

Court documents indicated that a hearing would be held on July 11.

Usada has received consent from many individuals, including patients of Dr. Brown’s, to interview him about his treatment of them “concerning whether his treatments have been in compliance with sport anti-doping rules,” the filing said.

Despite written permission from athletes for Dr. Brown to discuss his treatment of them, the filing said, he has declined. Usada said it believed it had exhausted “all reasonable efforts to obtain voluntary compliance from Dr. Brown,” and is now seeking legal redress to force him to give a videotaped deposition.

Dr. Brown is known in the track world for a distinctive practice of diagnosing hypothyroidism in distance runners – and at least one famous sprinter, the former Olympic champion Carl Lewis. The condition is an underactive thyroid that can lead to weight gain and fatigue but is considered relatively rare among athletes.

In a 2013 article in The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Brown said that athletes he had treated had won 15 Olympic gold medals. He told the newspaper that treating athletes for hypothyroidism can give them an advantage over their competitors who have not had the condition diagnosed. Those rivals “think if they work harder, the persistent fatigue and weakness will subside,” Dr. Brown told The Journal. “They think they can train through it.”

Some experts say that thyroid hormone can serve as a stimulant, lead to weight loss and improve alertness among athletes. But the World Anti-Doping Agency did not include thyroid medication on its 2016 list of banned substances.

Usada and Britain’s antidoping agency wanted the use of thyroid hormone barred, but WADA said that its experts had concluded that “there is no way to believe that thyroid hormone could be performance enhancing.”

In denying that he was doping athletes with banned substances, Dr. Brown told The Journal, “The general public seems to think that if you have a medical problem and then you get better, that you’re on something” that is prohibited.

Last June, after investigation by ProPublica and the BBC reported that Mr. Salazar operated in a gray area of what is permitted among athletes to increase their performance, Mr. Salazar wrote an open letter denying any wrongdoing.

He did not reference Dr. Brown by name with regard to hypothyroidism and a Salazar-coached athlete, Galen Rupp, a silver medalist in the 10,000 meters at the 2012 London Olympics. But Mr. Rupp said publicly in 2006 that Dr. Brown had diagnosed the condition, according to The Journal.

Mr. Rupp has severe allergies, breathing issues and hypothyroidism, Mr. Salazar wrote last year, and those conditions had been treated by two endocrinologists.

Mr. Rupp has emphatically denied taking prohibited substances.

“Galen takes asthma medication so he can breathe normally – not so he can run better,” wrote Mr. Salazar, who coaches the Nike Oregon Project, which includes Mo Farah of Britain, who won gold in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters at the London Games. Mr. Salazar added: “Galen takes his thyroid medication so that his body can function normally – not for any competitive advantage.”

Mr. Salazar also wrote that Dr. Brown had helped him conduct an experiment amid heightened concern in the track world that athletes could be sabotaged by someone rubbing a tainted substance on them.

They rubbed Androgel, a synthetic form of testosterone, on the test subjects — Mr. Salazar’s sons — to determine whether a small amount might set off a positive drug test. They ultimately determined that it was extremely unlikely that such a sabotage could happen.

In its court filing, Usada said it wanted to get from Dr. Brown information about the substances he used in treating athletes, the methods and personnel involved, why the treatments were initiated, and communications involving Dr. Brown that would assist the antidoping agency in “its ongoing efforts to investigate whether Dr. Brown and/or others may have violated sport anti-doping rules.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Usada Seeks to Ask Doctor About Care of Track Stars. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT