Team manager Bobby Motaung said the club had only learnt through the media that Schoeman, who is the Amakhosi physical trainer, tested positive for a banned substance.

She was informed by ASA on Tuesday afternoon that a urine sample taken from her after her 200m victory in the opening Absa Series meeting of the season, at Germiston's Herman Immelman Stadium on January 25, contained traces of the illegal anabolic steroid, Stanozolol.

"At the moment we cannot say anything until we have received a report from ASA on their findings," said Bobby Motaung. "But we are very disappointed at the manner in which the story has been portrayed in certain sections of the media, notably The Star on Thursday."

Schoeman was captured on the front page of the Johannesburg daily surrounded by the Chiefs players.

"This is an athletics matter and we cannot understand why our players, especially our brand was dragged into this issue. The Star has a number of athletics pictures and they could have used any of those pictures," said Motaung.

Schoeman said she had employed the services of a lawyer and that they would fight the case "to the bitter end". "I have requested that the B sample of my urine be tested, and then I definitely want a hearing. I want to state my case."

The second sample will be tested on March 5.

Adri Schoeman protests her innocence

South Africa's leading woman sprinter, Adri Schoeman, denied on Thursday that she had ever knowingly taken anabolic steroids.

"I just wouldn’t do anything like that for any reason whatsoever," she stressed. However, Athletics SA’s Linda Fearns confirmed that “Schoeman has been found to have used the illegal substance Stanozolol after tests at the Absa Series meeting in Germiston on January 25”.

Schoeman will now have to wait until March 5 when the results of the B sample, which was also taken at Germiston, are analysed in the pharmacological laboratories of the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein.

ASA’s Chris Hattingh, who is in charge of the drug-testing programme, was adamant that there is no way that a steroid like Stanozolol could occur naturally in a woman’s body. “I cannot see how it could have been prescribed for any normal condition by a knowledgeable medical practitioner.”

He did concede that anabolic steroids could be used positively in reversing the effects of severe muscle atrophy in very frail patients.

With regards to its abuse in athletics he pointed out that only last year during the Absa Series, Burger Lambrechts the top shot putter, tested positive for the same substance. “It is known that Stanozolol is used to enhance performances in all types of power sports, of which sprinting is one.”

Schoeman declined to reveal the name of the doctor who prescribed the substance she used to relieve severe back pain last year after the birth of her first child, Chloe.

"He gave me the last injection on October 1 and, because I asked him if there would still be anything in my system when I planned to resume my track career during the early season of 2002, he reassured me that it would be out of my body within a maximum of six weeks.”

Her highly respected coach, Stephane Kotze, was devastated when ASA made the news official, repeating that “this must now be decided officially by the doctors and ASA, but I don’t believe that Adri would ever do anything like this. I believe her statement that it may have happened as a result of her doctor’s pain-killing prescription.”

Hattingh re-iterated the IAAF’s steroid guideline when he said that “Stanozolol is a substance which is totally illegal and random tests can reveal its presence at any time”.

However, Schoeman is preparing herself for the legal battles to come and she has vowed to be in Bloemfontein for the B sample analysis “together with my doctor”.