LET'S TURN KIDS AWAY FROM DRUGS.

Byline: John Naber Local View

WE who have participated in the Olympic Games often express a peculiar preference. We recoil when someone calls us a ``former Olympian.'' No, we say, we are Olympians - there's no such thing as a former Olympian.

As in Greek tragedy, though, Olympians continue to play roles at the mercy of forces greater than themselves. One of those forces is the illegal and unhealthy use of performance-enhancing drugs, which continues to shadow modern sports and the Olympics.

Today, 60 percent of teens say that they are aware of elite athletes who use performance-enhancing drugs, according to a poll by Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which formed The Healthy Competition Foundation to combat such drug use. One in four teens knows someone who is using a performance-enhancing drug.

Two-thirds of teens have never had a conversation with their parents about performance-enhancing drugs. Clearly, we are losing a race with youth that is many times more important than the 100-meter backstroke.

Many young athletes, parents and coaches are unaware of the serious health problems that doping can cause. Depending on the substance, the dose and the individual athlete, effects can include heart, liver and kidney problems, and sometimes even death.

The story of performance-enhancing drug abuse involves all of sports, not just the Olympics. The Olympic movement has embraced a drug-testing regime as effective as modern science permits. Too often, the abusers stay a step ahead of the testers.

If the Olympic Games and the sports movement in general must continue to rely on testing, the race has already been lost.

Through The Healthy Competition Foundation, at least six Olympians and many current elite athletes have already pledged to abstain from doping. We are encouraging other athletes to do the same, because an anti-drug message is vitally important to fulfill the promise of the Olympic oath, which talks about the ``true spirit of sportsmanship.''

Taking the pledge is one way of talking to youth. Olympians and sports leaders in general need to work harder with young people and their families to create a positive, anti-drug environment that stresses the ideals of good sportsmanship and cautions against the life threatening dangers of performance-enhancing drugs.

The Olympic movement survived a century of nationalism during the 1900s - two world wars, mass boycotts, protests, a terrorist bomb and the shocking massacre of athletes in 1972. In the decades ahead, the focus almost certainly will return to the athletes themselves.

As athletes become more prominent in our culture, we must keep in mind the dreams of 10-year-olds striving to become Olympians. For their sake and the sake of the movement, we must develop a strategy to assure that all ``future'' Olympians reject performance-enhancing drugs.