Appeal Is Next for Jovanovic

U.S. bobsledder Pavle Jovanovic, disqualified from the Salt Lake City Winter Games after testing positive for the banned steroid 19-norandrostenedione, was suspended Wednesday for nine months by the North American Court of Arbitration for Sport. However, his attorney was heartened that it wasn’t worse and hopes the sanction will be reversed or modified on appeal.

Had Jovanovic intended to take a performance-enhancing substance instead of unknowingly consuming it in a dietary supplement, attorney Adam Driggs said, he would have gotten the two-year sentence standard in such cases. The relative brevity led Driggs to believe their appeal, which will be heard by the International Court for Arbitration in Sport next Wednesday in Salt Lake City, has a chance to succeed.

“The nine months is significant because that’s the lowest suspension the CAS panel has given,” Driggs said. “Obviously, they found it came from a contaminated supplement, or they would have given him two years.”

Driggs said he will draw parallels to Latvian slider Sandis Prusis, who tested positive for nandrolone in November and was suspended by the international bobsled federation (FIBT). Prusis said he had ingested the substance in a dietary supplement and appealed to the FIBT, which made the suspension retroactive and allowed him to compete at Salt Lake City.

Jovanovic, a former Rutgers football player from Toms River, N.J., cannot appeal to the FIBT because the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has authority to handle drug testing and adjudication of U.S. Olympic athletes. He was scheduled to be part of Todd Hays’ crew in the four-man event and possibly the two-man event.

The U.S. Olympic Committee got permission from the International Olympic Committee to submit the names of 11 bobsledders instead of 10 when it submitted its team rosters to the IOC on Monday. If Jovanovic can’t compete, Steve Mesler will replace him.

“I wish we could go to the FIBT,” Driggs said. “The reason Prusis was given three months is that’s what the Latvian federation asked for. It would give him a punishment but would allow him to compete at the Olympics. We would accept a punishment, because unfortunately, Pavle did take a contaminated supplement unknowingly, but he is responsible for that.

“We’d take punishment like letting him compete in only one event, not two, or letting him compete at the Olympics and suspending him for the start of next year’s World Cup, or having him lecture at high schools about the consequences of taking these things. He shouldn’t be treated like an athlete who stuck an injection in his side with nandrolone. One good thing about this is it does say he’s not a cheater, for what solace that gives.”

Matt Roy, executive director of the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation, acknowledged his federation’s program to educate athletes about dietary supplements “is not very organized,” and added “there is a lot being contemplated” for future efforts. He also acknowledged the prevalence of supplements among bobsledders and said AdvoCare, a producer of supplements and dietary aids, gives products and “a small amount of cash” to the USBSF in its role of sponsor.

“I can’t say as we actually go as far as to recommend supplements,” he said. “I think there are a number of people, athletes and coaches, within the federation that would say it’s required to compete at a high level, weight and strength being important. ... Our athletes and coaches basically live on protein shakes.”

He also said testing the supplements for banned substances was considered. “We were told it’s a non-issue,” he said, “because one batch could be clean and the next could be contaminated. We have a letter from AdvoCare saying its products are clean and stating that of 60 athletes [who used its products] in Sydney, none tested positive for banned substances.”

Losing Jovanovic “is certainly not going to help Todd’s chances in the two-man,” Roy said. “In the four-man, Billy Schuffenhauer would step in. I’m not sure he’s of Pavle’s ability, but Billy is also a great athlete and he’s one-quarter of the team in the four-man, so [adjusting to a new crewmate] is less of a factor.”

An Aptitude for Skating

Russian figure skater Alexander Abt’s medical history is almost as long as his competitive resume.

He has had two serious knee operations, treatment for a badly cut thigh muscle he suffered in a freak accident during an exhibition, sinus infections and surgery to remove a cyst from his sinuses last spring. He showed enormous promise on the rare occasions he was healthy, finishing third at the 1998 European championships.

Since he and coach Rafael Arutunian moved to Lake Arrowhead last summer, Abt seems to have put his medical crises behind him. A spectacular jumper who has a quadruple toe-triple toe in his repertoire, Abt finished second at the Russian national championships and again at the European championships, thrusting him into the medal picture at Salt Lake City. Although Alexei Yagudin missed the Russian competition and Evgeny Plushenko missed the European meet, Abt was thrilled to skate well and built his confidence before the Games.

“This is my last season, so I’m just trying to do my best,” said Abt, 25, who coaches part-time at the Ice Castle rink at Lake Arrowhead. “Nothing is broken now, so I’m hoping to compete hard and do my job.”

Abt and Arutunian were invited to the rink by owner Carol Probst, a former skater, after she saw Abt’s fifth-place performance at the 2000 Skate America event.

“We are happy in America,” Arutunian said. “Mrs. Probst does everything for us. Michelle Kwan is here, Sasha Cohen is here sometimes, and it is the right place for us.”

Said Abt: “It was very difficult to change from Russia to America and learn new rules, but there are a lot of good skaters here every day, so it’s like a competition. It’s a very beautiful place and I am enjoying it very much.”

Is His Other Car a Sled?

Georg Hackl of Germany, trying to win his fourth consecutive men’s luge gold medal, won the last race of the World Cup season on a sled that engineers from Porsche helped build.

His placement in the race at Winterberg, Germany, ensured him a good start position at Salt Lake City. “This win was very important, first for the starting place, and second for the morale,” he said.

The overall World Cup title was won by Markus Prock of Austria, with Armin Zoeggeler of Italy second and Hackl third. Those three are expected to vie for gold at Salt Lake City.

No Snow Job

It’s not that snowboarder Rosey Fletcher was blase about competing at the Olympics for the second time. But it took the enthusiasm of teammate Lisa Odynski, who will make her Olympic debut at Salt Lake City, to rekindle Fletcher’s fervor.

“On the plane ride back from Munich [after a competition], she was so excited, I had to ask, ‘Are we going to the same Games?’” Fletcher said. “It made me a little less serious and made me realize it’s a fun event. She changed my whole perspective about the whole thing.”

Fletcher, of Girdwood, Alaska, is also enthusiastic about the format change in her event, parallel giant slalom. Two snowboarders will compete side-by-side on the course, instead of one athlete at a time competing against the clock.

“I actually prefer parallel giant slalom because it’s a little more spectator-friendly than giant slalom, which snowboard desperately needs,” Fletcher said. “It’s just pure competition. I take chances I normally wouldn’t take if there weren’t somebody next to me.”

Here and there

The Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles awarded a grant of $612,000 to Kids in Sports, Los Angeles to provide year-round programs at 14 parks and school-based sites that serve 12,000 inner-city kids, and a grant of $397,500 to LA’s BEST, to be used for after-school programs for more than 17,500 kids at 101 elementary schools in the L.A. Unified School District.

Those were the largest grants of the more than $2.3 million awarded by the AAF, which is endowed with Southern California’s share of the surplus from the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

The AAF has disbursed more than $115 million to start or help youth sports programs in Southern California.

Four U.S. figure skating pairs ended their partnerships.

Most noteworthy was the senior pair of Laura Handy and Jonathon Hunt, who skated together for two years and finished sixth at the recent U.S. championships at Staples Center. Junior pairs silver medalists Janey Mayne and Josh Martin, who trained in Torrance, also split.