Athletics: Americans bid to stamp out dope rumours

By EUGENE BINGHAM in Athens

When faced with the glaringly obvious, it pays to be honest.

George Williams, slow-speaking, slow-moving coach of the quickest track and field team at the Olympics, paused when asked yesterday how much the drugs controversies were affecting people's view of athletics.

"Well," said the US head coach of the men's team, "there's a cloud out there and there's no point me lying about that. Everybody is looking at that cloud and hoping that we get through these Olympics without it raining."

Presiding over an outfit which was last week slammed by World Anti Doping Agency head Dick Pound for the part it played in the drugs scourge, there was no point dodging.

Track and field has been a cause for celebration for successive US Olympic teams, a source of around 20 medals, but in Athens there is a fair bit of squirming going on among team officials. Rumours fly quicker than a whirring discus.

Yesterday, they moved to squash several of those. A team spokeswoman confirmed a story reported by one Greek newspaper that police had been called when anti-doping agents turned up at a US training camp on Crete.

But, she said, there was no suggestion of dodging the testers, as hinted by the local report. Anti-doping agents had asked at the hotel reception for a particular athlete, identifying themselves as friends of the athlete. After the athlete had provided a test sample, police were called to check that the officials were legitimate anti-doping agents, seeing as they had used the ruse to enter the hotel.

"It was confirmed that they were [agents]. It was a case of the Greek police doing their job."

She also denied a story doing the rounds that Maurice Greene, defending Olympic 100m champion, had avoided a test. "Maurice is probably the most easy to find person on the US team and he was tested on Crete on August 12."

About 1000 of the 4000 tests conducted by the US Anti-Doping Agency in the build-up to the games were on track and field competitors.

The spokeswoman added that none of the Americans in the 100m field had ever had a doping offence. What she did not mention was that world record-holding American Tim Montgomery has been left behind, entangled in the biggest pre-Games drugs scandal. Nor did she mention that Montgomery's partner, Marion Jones, is in the long jump despite being accused of drug cheating too. It is hard to talk about the US team without talking about drugs, but on Sunday morning [NZ time] the conversation will stop at least momentarily to see who will seize the title of the world's fastest. Coach Williams says he thinks Greene is back into a dangerous mood after his slight form slump.

"I think Maurice has regained his confidence because he has been practising hard, very hard over those last 20m where he's been losing it.

"It's going to be tough to call who is going to win. Greene and the kid from Jamaica [Asafa Powell] could get distracted by each other and Shawn Crawford could steal it, or Justin Gatlin."

Missing from his list is Kim Collins, last year's world champion, who is feeling that Greene does not pay him enough respect.

"And not just him, there are a lot of other people too, because they see the winning time in the world championships and think, 'That's not good enough'," Collins said. "But I say, on the day, that is all it took. It does not really matter if you run fast or not. The idea of a race is that you set off together to find a winner. If you take half an hour to win the 100m, hey, you are still the winner."