SANTA ANA, Calif. — Former Olympic ice dancer Pasha Grishuk was drugged with GHB, a common date rape drug, during a business meeting at a ritzy Orange County hotel, a sheriff's spokesman said today.

Grishuk, who won Olympic gold medals for Russia in ice dancing in 1994 and 1998, was attending a business meeting at the St. Regis Monarch Beach on April 12 when she began to feel ill and numb, sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said.

While eating dinner, she spotted a partially dissolved pill in the bottom of her drink. Investigators later found another dissolved pill in the bottom of a drink she ordered in the hotel's lounge.

Amormino says toxicology tests that came back Tuesday were positive for GHB, but it wasn't immediately clear how the pills got in Grishuk's drinks or who put them there.

"How somebody was able to do that, I honestly don't know, but it appears that somebody, for whatever reason, attempted to drug her," he said.

GHB, or gamma hydroxy butyrate, can cause breathing problems, loss of consciousness, seizures, drowsiness, coma and death.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration labels GHB a "predatory drug" that can be mixed with alcohol to reduce resistance from a victim before a sexual assault. It is also popular with teenagers at raves and is sometimes used by bodybuilders for its anabolic effects, the DEA said.

The 36-year-old Grishuk is a Ukrainian native who now lives in Los Angeles.

An e-mail to Grishuk was not immediately returned. A spokeswoman at the St. Regis did not immediately return a call for comment.