ATHLETICS:Just as the testing for HGH is beginning to pay off more sophisticated doping methods are just around the corner – if not already here, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

THE FILM Withnail And I was on TV during the week, and just like the finest wines available to humanity, it seems to get better with age.

Camden Town, London. 1969. Could be right here, right now. I’d entirely forgotten about that scene in the flat, early on, when Withnail picks up a tabloid newspaper and starts reading aloud, to I.

Withnail: Listen to this. “Curse of the superman. I took drugs to win medals” said top athlete Geoff Woade.”

I: Where’s the coffee?

Withnail [reading from the newspaper]: “In a world exclusive interview, 33-year-old shot-putter Geoff Woade, who weighs 317 lb, admitted taking massive doses of anabolic steroids, drugs banned in sport. It used to get him bad tempered and act down, said his wife. He used to pick on me. But now he’s stopped he’s much better in our sex life and in our general life.”

[I pours water from the kettle into a bowl and goes back into the living room. Withnail follows him.]

Withnail: My God, this huge, thatched head with its earlobes and cannonball is now considered sane. “Geoff Woade is feeling better and is now prepared to step back into society and start tossing his orb about.” Look at him. Look at Geoff Woade. His head must weight 50lb on its own.

If Withnail picked up a newspaper this week he might get a good line out of it too. Drugs in sport is always good material. On Monday, there was the story of Wigan rugby league player Terry Newton, who tested positive for human growth hormone – better known in doping circles as HGH. This wasn’t just another drugs bust. Newton was the first athlete from any sport to be nailed for HGH, which up to now had been largely viewed as undetectable. Unless those taking it were stupid. Newton was target tested in November, following some intelligence gathering from the UK Anti-Doping Agency. When notified of his positive test, Newton confessed and received an automatic two-year ban.

This is a big deal. For years, HGH has been high on the shopping list of dopers, even though the benefits are somewhat disputed. It would appear HGH does exactly what it says on the tin; generates human growth. Initially, HGH was extracted from the pituitary glands of cadavers – and it wasn’t until 1985 that the biosynthetic version came onto the market.

Naturally, its use was solely intended for medical purposes, such as the treatment of children’s growth disorders. Soon, other industries caught on, and HGH was marketed as a miracle drug for its muscle toning and anti-aging properties – and inevitably as a performance enhancing drug in sport. Its clinical use is perfectly legal; its use in sport is positively banned.

When, in July 1998, the Festina team soigneur Willy Voet was stopped by police at the Franco-Belgian border, on his way to Dublin for the start of the Tour de France, he had, in two cooler bags behind his seat, 234 doses of EPO, 80 flasks of HGH, 160 capsules of testosterone, and 60 pills of Asaflow – which is a sort of highly-potent aspirin. In his terrifying confessional, Breaking the Chain, Voet claims that HGH abuse was rampant in the peloton, and that the chances of being caught for taking it were zero.

The problem for the dope testers is being able to distinguish between artificial HGH and HGH naturally synthesised and secreted by the pituitary gland. Actually that’s only part of the problem, as artificial HGH is only traceable for a day or two.

Terry Newton getting busted offers some hope that HGH testing is starting to work – or at least might work as a deterrent for any athlete thinking of abusing it. The reality is the only athletes ever linked with HGH abuse in the past were those shown up as cheats by their own admittance rather than the labs.

Two years ago, when Marion Jones was finally done for all her sins after the Balco scandal, it emerged she would frequently inject herself with HGH.

Earlier this year, when Mark McGwire finally admitted he was on steroids when he broke baseball’s home run record in 1998, it was also revealed that HGH was somewhere in his medicine chest.

On Wednesday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced it was “so far, so clean” at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, as more than two-thirds of the planned 2,100 tests already conducted had come back negative. The IOC may be winning the battle on drugs such as HGH, but they’ve a long way to go before winning the war.

Ever hear of S107? Neither had I, until I saw it mentioned this week in a cycling magazine. Without getting overly scientific, S107 is a benzothiazepine, which plays a role in muscle contraction. Early studies done on mice suggest that injections of S107 can slow muscle fatigue. The intention here is to treat people with congenital heart problems, but S107 also increases exercise capacity. Evidently they’ve also done some tests on cyclists, and there are genuine concerns that S107 is already being added to the bidons of some riders in the peloton.

The problem with HGH and S107 is nothing compared to the potential problem with gene doping. This is a war Wada (World Anti-Doping Agency) may never win. Gene doping is very scientific, and in the February edition of the medical journal Science, there’s a feature story which suggests that given many forms of human enhancement are becoming more feasible, sought-after, and even justifiable, it’s only a matter of time before we see this gene transfer in sport. If it’s not being used already, that is.

We already know gene therapy treatment in the US intended to reverse muscle weakness has restored muscle mass in monkeys. In November, scientists in Columbus, Ohio, published results of a study where they’d injected extra copies of the follistatin gene into the leg muscles of the monkeys – already knowing that follistatin injected into mice to block myostatin, a protein that decreases muscle mass, resulted in the so-called “mighty mouse”. Within three months the monkeys’ thigh muscles had increased almost twofold, and the effect lasted for 15 months.

If, or when, similar gene transfer is applied to humans then the sporting world – never known to miss such an opportunity – could get very interesting. Gene doping is essentially undetectable, even more so that HGH, as gene structures will always vary between individuals. It explains why some people are inherently better at sports than others.

But if in 10 or 20 years gene doping gets out of hand then the curse of the superman, the latest Geoff Woade story, will be more frightening than Withnail could ever have imagined. The huge, thatched head with its earlobes and cannonball may well be considered sane.