Jacobs to Challenge Any Ban Over Steroid

Regina Jacobs has become the first American athlete to announce she will challenge any attempt to ban her for testing positive for the new designer steroid, tetrahydrogestrinone.

The 1500 metres world indoor record holder faces a minimum two-year suspension that would prevent her competing at the Athens Olympics in August.

But now a demand for arbitration against USA Track & Field and the US Anti-Doping Agency has been filed by the veteran Jacobs, who was 39 when she beat Britain's Kelly Holmes to the gold medal in the 1500m at the world indoor championships in Birmingham last March before she tested positive for the anabolic steroid THG.

Jacobs claims in her defence that, as THG was not on the International Olympic Committee's list of prohibited substances, she should not be punished.

"USATF and USADA seek to deny me the opportunity to compete in the upcoming Olympics for something I have never heard of and which was not on any list of banned substances but which is supposedly somehow 'related' to something on the IOC list of prohibited substances," said Jacobs.

"Moreover USADA has refused to produce documents to me concerning what it contends THG is and has denied the expert I retained to witness the testing of my B sample a meaningful opportunity to witness the test."

Jacobs, who would be one of the 1500m favourites in Athens, is the leading name among the four Americans to have tested positive for THG.

The most notable international to have tested positive for it is Britain's Dwain Chambers, the European 100m champion and record holder. He, too, is appealing and is expected to have a hearing before an independent UK Athletics disciplinary panel.

Jacobs, who shortly before regaining her 1500m title in Birmingham had become the first woman to break four minutes indoors, added: "I have decided to meet these unfair charges head on in order to retain my eligibility to try out for, and compete in, the upcoming 2004 Olympics.

"By initiating this arbitration I hope to get a fair hearing before an impartial and unbiased panel of arbitrators, unencumbered with any prior relationships with USATF, USADA and the laboratory at University of California which conducted the drug testing."