DRUG-TESTING GOES HIGHER TECH : POSITIVE TESTS COULD MUSHROOM.

Byline: Jon Wilner Daily News Staff Writer

His yellow eyes were the window to the Seoul.

It has been almost a decade, and the image still burns. Not light middleweight Roy Jones Jr.'s controversial defeat. Not the U.S. men's basketball team's loss to the Soviet Union.

It is Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson testing positive for banned substances at the 1988 Seoul Summer Games and the subsequent removal of his gold medal in the 100 meters.

Imagine the same, or worse, in Atlanta: a record number of positive drug tests, perhaps involving top stars like Michael Johnson, Gwen Torrence or Dan O'Brien. And imagine the International Olympic Committee's nightmare scenario coming true because of its own advances in drug-testing technology.

Talk about testing the hand that feeds you.

But some athletic officials believe it may happen, believe there may be 100 positive tests this fortnight. (The previous seven Summer Games combined produced a reported 46 violations.)

Already, three Iranian athletes, an Australian, an Italian and a Russian have been banned from Atlanta for substance abuse. A second Russian, world-champion weight lifter Alexei Petrov, had a life ban reversed by a Russian court that accepted his claim that he had been sabotaged by a former girlfriend.

Earlier this week Michael Turner, a member of the British Olympic Medical Committee, said 75 percent of the track and field athletes participating in Atlanta have used performance-enhancing drugs. Track and IOC officials have ridiculed Turner's assertion. But even if he is 25 percent accurate, recent advances in detection technology will mean a slew of positive tests - and terrible press.

Hello, Mr. Samaranch, this is Ted Koppel.

``Doping is the negation of sport and its role as we understand it,'' IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch said. ``(Performance-enhancing drugs) cause physical and moral death.''

Which explains why on Monday the IOC announced it had increased its out-of-competition testing schedule, and that in the past year it had administered 39,000 random, unannounced tests. There were 480 positive results for banned substances.

Some of the detection procedures are as old as IOC drug testing, which was implemented in 1968. Emory University's genetics lab, for example, will perform gender-verification tests on all female athletes not previously tested. Cells from the inside of the cheek will be taken, then screened by molecular methods for the absence of the male gene.

But scientists also will analyze more than 1,800 urine samples with three $500,000 machines called high-resolution mass spectrometers (HRMS), the cutting-edge of drug detection. HRMS can detect anabolic steroids up to 18 months after use - compared to the traditional 15-month detection window. It is that three-month difference that sparked the apocalyptic predictions for the Atlanta Games.

The IOC, of course, disagrees.

``In principle, we don't expect a high increase in the number of positives,'' said professor Jordi Segura, an official with the IOC doping commission.

The three medalists in each event will be tested, along with a fourth, randomly selected participant. The samples will be divided into ``A'' and ``B'' containers and taken to the lab for testing. The HRMS are designed to sniff out anabolic steroids like stanozolol and metandienone. Scientists also will use 22 standard bench-top testing machines to hunt for steroids, stimulants and diuretics.

If an ``A'' sample is positive, the lab reports the finding to the IOC medical commissioner. The athlete (or representative of the athlete) is then invited to the lab for the ``B'' sample test. If that, too, is positive, the athlete is disqualified. An arbitration court will be in Atlanta to hear disputes.

The object of the IOC's eye - or ire - many believe, is China. Last year seven of its athletes flunked drug tests at the Asian Games, and one look at its female swimmers is all you need to realize they have not been on tofu diets. The violators were using dehydrotestosterone (DHT), a sophisticated anabolic steroid never before tested. The findings bolstered the IOC's hopes that a crackdown breakthrough was forthcoming.

But users of banned substances often stay one step ahead of the law. The substance of choice now is human growth hormone (HGH), which is extremely difficult to detect because it appears naturally in the body. Its availability has increased and price decreased because a synthetic version is being produced worldwide.

It's an unending game of ethical tag. But deep in its collective conscious, the IOC may be hoping it doesn't catch too many culprits this month.

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Photo: (1--color) Carol O'Neal works at Atlanta's Olympic d oping control center, where scientists will analyze more than 1,800 urine samples during Games.

Associated Press