Jager ban points to problems

Kathy Jager may well be the most-talked-about woman at this weekend’s USA Track & Field National Masters Championship meet.

Many people don’t know her name. Many don’t know what events she does. But the 59-year-old track star stands out.

From the waist down, she’s petite, with an athlete’s prominent veins protruding from muscular legs.

And from the waist up, she’s (pick your own word) jacked … ripped … built … rugged. Just like the rest of the women in her family, she points out.

Jager is a good-natured, funny woman. She’s open (after you hear her story, you’ll appreciate that fact a bit more). And she’s back in track and field after being banned for use of steroids.

Drug use is a sensitive matter in athletics. It should be. But Jager’s story illustrates the problems that exist when masters athletes competing entirely for fun are held to the same standard as youngsters trying to make a living at a sport.

Jager’s crime, which was discovered in 1999: She took the drug Estratest. Just like a half million other women do to combat the problems associated with menopause.

Estratest is a hormone replacement drug. And it contains a small quantity of testosterone. She says it neither made her faster nor stronger, but it worked better than any of the other replacements she’d tried.

Two weeks after setting world records at a world championship meet in Gateshead, England, Jager received word that she’d failed her drug test.

For the record, U.S. officials don’t test their masters athletes at meets like the one going on in Orono.

“I got the test results and I thought, ‘There’s got to be an error,'” she said. “I was just flabbergasted. Then I couldn’t figure out what I could have tested positive for.”

After she figured it out, Jager admits she didn’t think the ban would hold up.

She’d tell her story, get a statement from her doctor, and be reinstated.

Not quite. Her sentence: a two-year suspension.

But that’s not the worst part of Jager’s story. This is: Even before the drug test, she’d been targeted by the British media, who responded to an anonymous tip that a man was masquerading as a woman at the world championships.

It turns out that “man” was Jager.

After crowds of reporters began following her around (much to the chagrin of the woman who says her husband – the father of her children – would have been amazed). In order to quell the uproar, Jager submitted to a voluntary physical exam.

“Before [I ran] the 200, they held a press conference with all the reporters and they announced that indeed, yes, I am a woman,” Jager said.

“Then I ran the 200 and broke another record.”

Ah, yes. The records. That’s part of the story, too. Jager is fast, and holds plenty of world age-group marks.

During her two-year hiatus, Jager had plenty of time to think. She found out how many friends she had. And she had plenty.

So there was Jager, this week, back where she belonged. On the track. Encouraging old friends. Sharing hugs and kind words and stories.

“For me, it was almost worth going through it, just to see the goodness of people in their heart,” she said.

John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net or by calling 990-8214 or 1-800-310-8600.