From Daily Telegraph http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/sport/

Winter Olympics: Pound says US athletes should not be at Olympics

By Mihir Bose in Salt Lake City (Filed: 04/02/2002)

A HIGH-RANKING member of the International Olympic
Committee yesterday called for US Track and Field,
the most powerful national athletics body in the
world, to be thrown out of the Olympic movement for
breaching drug testing rules.

Dick Pound, chairman of the World Anti-Doping
Agency - the joint drug-testing body set up by the
Olympic movement and governments - said here
yesterday that US Track and Field should be "kicked
out" of the International Association of Athletics
Federations, which would end their Olympic
involvement.

IAAF rules require that when an athlete fails a drugs
test, the national body should inform the IAAF of their
name. All other national associations, including UK
Athletics, do so. The Americans do not.

Pound said: "It is not rocket science. If you have to
form another federation then you have to do so. US
Track and Field have a serious problem. It has to be
addressed either by the US Olympic Committee or the
IAAF. You can't have them flouting the rules."

US Track and Field say that under American law they
cannot provide the names of athletes who have
failed a test unless the entire legal process has been
exhausted. This can take years. Just before the
Sydney Olympics it emerged that there were 18
American athletes who had failed drugs tests, but
despite persistent IAAF requests US Track and Field
have refused to tell the IAAF, let alone the world,
who these athletes are. It is suspected that some of
them may have taken part in the Sydney Games.

Pound described US Track and Field's reasons for not
providing names as "a series of pretexts" and said
they were wrong to say they were prohibited from
doing so under US law.

Pound likens an athlete failing a drugs test to a man
who is accused of a crime. In that case disclosing his
name does not mean he is guilty, and he believes US
Track and Field should follow the same principle.

Pound, who failed to get elected as president of the
IOC - being defeated by Jacques Rogge in Moscow
last July - is a Canadian QC and has always taken a
tough line on drug cheats.

Yesterday he made it clear that when the Games
begin on Friday, 1,000 tests will have been
conducted in the past three months. "Everyone can
line up at the start in confidence that they will not be
competing with anyone who has failed a test," he
said.

Pound also reiterated that athletes who take food
supplements which result in positive tests have only
themselves to blame. "I don't think there is an
international athlete who has the IQ of a room
temperature who is unaware that dietary
supplements can result in positive tests."

Meanwhile, it emerged that as America recovers from
September 11, New York, which has never hosted the
Olympics but is now seeking to stage them in 2012,
may not be chosen as the American city for the
Games.

It has three rivals: San Francisco, Washington and
Houston. And the indications are that the feeling in
the aftermath of September 11 that New York should
get the Games and use them to rebuild the city is
now fading.