Olympic Games 2004 in Athens,Greece

Allen Johnson, winner of a record four world 110 metres hurdles titles, has accused the United States Anti-Doping Agency of being like a "Nazi organisation" because of the way it is apparently pursuing Marion Jones.

"It's almost like Usada is the Gestapo, some Nazi organisation that's just out to ban as many athletes as they possibly can," said Johnson, the 1996 Olympic champion and favourite for another gold in Athens. "The doping system that the athletes are under right now, it needs to be fixed."

Johnson thinks Jones, the triple Olympic champion, is being unfairly targeted. "It's not fair to drag somebody through the mud because of who they've fallen in love with," he said.

Jones's boyfriend Tim Montgomery is one of four athletes whom Usada wants banned for life. None has tested positive but Usada has accused them of doping offences based on evidence gathered in the FBI investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative.

Usada has not officially charged Jones, who has failed to make the US team in the 100m and will compete in the long jump final tonight. But she remains under investigation, despite her denials of ever using banned substances. "I think Usada should be on the side of the athletes," Johnson said. "Do more as far as educating the athletes what the rules are, how the whole process works.

GROSSETO, Italy -- Michael Johnson should have a better idea today whether he'll lose his relay gold medal from the 2000 Olympics as part of the Jerome Young doping case. The International Association of Athletics Federations will hold an unusual council meeting, where it is expected to rule on whether to recommend to the International Olympic Committee to strip the United States of the victory.

The meeting, at the junior world championships, comes 2 1/2 weeks after the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled 400-metre world champion Jerome Young, who ran in the 1,600-metre relay's opening and semifinal rounds, should be stripped of his Olympic gold because of a positive doping test in 1999.

Young, who has denied taking a prohibited substance, was suspended but later exonerated by USA Track and Field, enabling him to compete in Sydney. But the court said Young was improperly cleared, should not have been allowed to go to the 2000 Olympics and should be stripped of the medal.

The power failure that crippled much of Greece for four hours last Monday is only the latest indication that the Athens Olympics may be almost as challenging for visitors as it is for athletes. But there are other, subtler omens as well. Take the new 8,000-seat boxing venue in the Athens neighborhood of Peristeri. With a slick blue-and-red ring capped by a colossal TV screen and a snazzy digital scoreboard, it's a dazzling place to watch a fight. But step outside the main hall and the polished illusion falls apart: there are few signs telling people how to get where they're going, a lack of parking spaces and mismatched carpets. Across town, the historic marathon course will also make for stirring TV, with 25 camera crews and two helicopters covering the 42-km race. The only thing missing along several portions of the route will be spectators, because there's no place to stand on the roadside. Last month, organizers said there would be room for just 1,000 spectators at the start of the Athens Games' signature event and tens of thousands at the finish line. And if you want to watch along the course itself, you'll have to find your own space. This isn't just a matter of construction delays. One facility, for example, was completed well ahead of schedule: the International Broadcasting Center where NBC, the American television network that spent $793 million to secure the Games' U.S. rights, and the other TV networks will coordinate their coverage.

Welcome to the made-for-TV Games. An emphasis on televised spectacle at the expense of visitors is not exactly new — it was no accident that in 2000, Sydney's opening ceremony of 7,000 performers, Aboriginal rockers and fireworks artists from five continents became the most watched TV program in Aussie history — but the Athens Games are stressing the video image as never before. With less than a month before the Games begin, the Athens heat and terrorism jitters have conspired to leave ticket sales well behind schedule. Just 2 million have been sold so far out of a total of 5.3 million; that's only 34%. By contrast, at the same stage in the run-up to the Sydney Games in 2000, organizers had sold 50% of their total. Hotel bookings are also down, and earlier this month, Athens workers demanding pay increases threatened mass strikes and walk-outs. On the other hand, TV viewership is looking positively steroidal. Organizers predict a staggering 4 billion viewers worldwide, up from 3.7 billion in 2000. Four thousand TV crew members and 1,000 cameras will produce an unprecedented 3,900 hours of live coverage for audiences from Birmingham to Bangkok. NBC alone says it expects to air three times more coverage than in Sydney.

A huge shadow was cast over American sport and next month's Olympic Games when the former husband of the world's biggest female track star claimed yesterday that some of her greatest feats in sport had been drug-assisted.

C J Hunter testified to federal investigators that he had seen the triple Olympic champion Marion Jones injecting herself with a banned drug. He also said that he had injected her himself.

Jones's lawyers rejected the allegations yesterday and said they were motivated by revenge. None the less, they are potentially hugely damaging both to the image of American sport and to the Olympics, which begin in Athens in three weeks.

The claims about Jones emerged as part of an investigation into 27 athletes - among them some of the biggest names in world athletics - who are suspected of using the steroid THG. If the allegations prove true, it could be the most damaging scandal in athletics since the Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of his 100m gold medal at the Seoul Olympics in 1988.

In his testimony to the investigation - leaked to a US newspaper - C J Hunter, whose marriage to Jones ended in acrimony two years ago, claimed that she injected herself with banned drugs during the Sydney Games in 2000 where she won an unprecedented five medals, including three golds.

Hunter, a former world shot-put champion whose career ended in 2000 after a series of positive tests for the banned steroid nandrolone, also told investigators that during the Games he injected drugs into his wife's abdomen because she was too squeamish to do so.

He told officials investigating allegations of doping at California's Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (Balco) that during the Games his wife used human growth hormone, the steroid THG, insulin and the endurance-boosting drug EPO.

Erwin Rogers, a federal agent, said: "Hunter stated that he saw Jones inject herself with EPO ... Jones would inject herself in the front waistline area slightly underneath the skin ... Initially, Hunter injected Jones because Jones did not want to inject herself in this location."

According to the secret documents that have been obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle, Hunter has told investigators that the syringes were supplied either by the Balco founder, Victor Conte, or by Jones's coach, Trevor Graham, and flushed down the lavatory after use. He also alleged that Jones began suffering from acne as a side-effect of drug abuse and had started using make-up to cover it.

Tools of torture that Saddam Hussein's slain son, Uday, used to punish underperforming Iraqi athletes were displayed for the media yesterday at a Baghdad sports stadium ahead of the Olympic Games next month.

Journalists were shown medieval-style torture equipment, including an "iron maiden-like" casket with metal spikes fixed to the inside that athletes had been forced into, and chain whips with steel barbs the size of tennis balls attached to the end.

"During the old regime, Uday was looking for results and he wanted winners. He didn't like second place," said Talib Mutan, an Iraqi Olympic committee official.

"If the athletes didn't come in first, they were punished. And he would punish the people around the athletes, their managers and coaches included," he said.

Uday ran the Olympic committee while his father ruled Iraq. He was killed by US forces last July along with his elder brother, Qusay.

Mr Mutan said athletes who earned Uday's wrath were tortured in various ways, through beatings, sleep deprivation and being forced to walk barefoot over hot asphalt during Iraq's searing summer.

The official said there had been suggestions made to display the torture equipment in a museum, but no final decision had been made.

The International Olympic Committee reinstated Iraq's national Olympic board in February after it was suspended early last year, enabling Iraqi athletes to compete at the upcoming Athens Olympics.

The world's top female tennis players may boycott this month's Olympics after the German Olympic Committee refused to send its top two women to Athens.

"A boycott is being considered," France's Nathalie Dechy said.

Germany's exclusion of Anca Barna and Marlene Weingartner has drawn fire from not only the other players, but also officials from the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) tour.

The WTA oversees women's tennis worldwide.

"This is an injustice to our players, so we're lobbying the International Olympic Committee and the German Olympic Committee to reverse their decision in the interest of our sport," WTA Tour chief executive Larry Scott told Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper.

Scott and others plan to meet this week with some of the players at a WTA tournament in Montreal.

Barna (46th) and Weingartner (52nd) are ranked in the top 55 players in the world.

But according to German officials their play has not been good enough this year to meet the tough standards required to qualify for the Olympic Games.

Olympic tennis competition is scheduled to begin on August 15 in Athens.

Athens' Olympic preparations have been laughingly billed as the modern Greek ruins, but with only one week to go, Games organisers are riding a wave of optimism that they will be ready to welcome the world in style on 13 August.

The Greek capital has made itself into the comeback kid of Olympic host cities. All 37 venues are finished, new transport links have done much to unlock traffic problems and thous- ands of athletes are filling up an Olympic village hailed almost unanimously as the best ever.

Persistent doubts over Greece's ability to deliver world-class sporting venues and mounting concerns over the safety of tens of thousands of athletes, officials and visitors have subsided.

The Australian mission, which has been among Athens' most dogged critics, revealed the extent of the turnaround when their team's boss John Coates rated Greek venues as better than those on his home soil four years ago:

"The venues have been scaled bigger and better than they were at Sydney," he said this week. The US women's football team later put to rest transatlantic fears over haphazard security planning as they cheerfully checked in to a city previously billed as dangerous and anti-American.

"I haven't worried about security once," said Abby Wambach, the US striker. "The Olympic village is its own little compound. They took care of every little detail, it's like they've done it all before."

Gianna Angelopoulos, who has become the figurehead of Athens' stubborn insistence that it would deliver the goods since taking over the organising committee in 2000, put the turnaround down to pressure.

"We finally made up for lost time. Greece has made a gigantic effort and this miracle, which came about from hard work, anxiety and stress - constructive anxiety and stress - during the past four years, has brought us to this point."

What a difference a year makes. This time last year Jacques Rogge, the head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), was still jousting with Greek organisers over chronic delays and issuing coded pleas to them to pick up their pace or face disaster.

Years of similar appeals had seemed to fall on deaf ears and Athens had come close to losing the Games altogether in the summer of 2000 as the IOC's patience came dangerously close to running out. Then the IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch delivered his "yellow card" warning after years of in-fighting and crippling bureaucracy had left Olympic Athens stuck on the drawing board.

The veteran lawyer Stratos Stratigis, who was drafted in to head up the organising committee after Athens won its 1997 bid to get the Games, admitted that three years just fell by the wayside

Barring a successful appeal, sprinter Torri Edwards will be suspended for at least two years for taking a banned stimulant, knocking her out of the Olympics and perhaps giving Marion Jones a chance to defend her gold medal in the 100 meters.

A review panel concluded there were no exceptional circumstances that would warrant a lesser penalty, Travis Tygart, director of legal affairs for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, told The Associated Press on Saturday.

''The rule says it's a minimum of two years,'' Tygart said.

The finding by the panel of the International Association of Athletics Federations has been forwarded to the U.S. arbitration panel that initially heard Edwards' case. That panel will determine Edwards' penalty but has no authority to make it less than a two-year ban, Tygart said.

The American Arbitration Association panel had found that there may be exceptional circumstances in Edwards' case, but the IAAF board disagreed.

The panel's official finding is expected next week. Edwards can appeal to the international Court of Arbitration for Sport, whose ruling would be binding.

Edwards' lawyer, Emanuel Hudson, did not return several phone calls to his office, but he told The New York Times that Edwards was ''very saddened and disappointed'' by the ruling. She said during the U.S. Olympic trials in July that she would appeal any suspension as far as she could.

The world champion in the 100, Edwards tested positive at a meet in Martinique in April, but she blamed a glucose supplement, saying she was unaware it contained the stimulant nikethamide. She said her physician bought the glucose at a store there because she wasn't feeling well.

She had argued there was no reason to cheat at the meet because there was no prize money and the field was weak. She said she felt compelled to run because she was paid a substantial appearance fee and was the meet's leading attraction.

Edwards was expected to contend for medals in the 100 and 200 in Athens. Her absence could give Jones a chance to defend her gold medal in the 100 because it would free up a spot in the event.

Gail Devers, the fourth-place finisher in the 100 at the trials, would be entitled to Edwards' spot. But the 37-year-old Devers, in her fifth Olympics, could decide to focus on the 100-meter hurdles, an event she has dominated for the last decade, except at the Olympics.

If she does run in the 100 and hurdles, Devers would face the possibility of six races, counting the qualifying heats, in the first five days of the Olympic track competition. Besides, she already is a two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 100.

If Devers withdraws from the 100, the next in line would be Jones, who finished fifth in the trials. Jones has been training for the 100 during her work at the relay camp in Munich, Germany, this week.

World 400 metre champion Jerome Young of the United States failed a doping test after running in a meeting in Paris on July 23, L'Equipe sports daily reported.

It was the second time that Young had tested positive for drugs following being caught for taking the anabolic steroid nandrolone in June 1999.

The paper said that 27-year-old Young tested positive for the banned blood booster EPO (erythropoietin) after the Golden League meeting at the Stade de France in the build-up to the Athens Olympics.

Young finished sixth in the race in a slow time of 45.84 seconds.

He is the first top sprinter to test positive for EPO which has been a popular drug with endurance athletes and cyclists for over 15 years.

It boosts performance by increasing the volume of oxygen-rich red blood cells in the blood.

Compatriot Kelli White, however, told US athletics officials that she had taken EPO after testing positive for the stimulant Modafinil during last year's world championships in Paris where she won the 100m and 200m titles.

Young's 1999 doping case is still causing controversy because the following year he was part of the US 4x400m relay team that won the gold medal at the Sydney Olympics.

The US athletics federation took no action against him and it was only three years later just before the Paris world championships that his failed drug test was revealed in newspaper reports.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has ruled that all of Young's results for two years from his failed 1999 test must be annulled, and is expected to strip the Americans of their 2000 Olympic relay gold.

Young failed to make the American team for Athens only getting as far as the semi-finals in the US national trials in July.

He now faces an automatic life ban from athletics if the positive test taken by a French laboratory from his first sample is confirmed from the second sample which has been sent to Lausanne in Switzerland where the IOC has its headquarters.

Young's latest drugs failure adds to a series of doping infractions and accusations which have shattered the US athletics team in the build-up to the Athens Olympics.

Forty years ago, we applied rules on amateurism to top-class athletes. By the end of this century, our current official stance against drugs in sport will look every bit as risible. The orthodox view is that doping is cheating, that it is a minority activity and that the system of testing that operates under the auspices of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) can, and must, succeed in eradicating drugs from sport. But many academics who study sport are now at odds with this stance.

There are costs to opposing the official position, however; if you are to get any official research cooperation from Wada and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), blanket opposition to drugs is the only view you are allowed to take. Three of my colleagues in the academic study of sport were threatened with legal action by two different international sporting organisations last year, simply for stating aloud some truths about the extent of drug use in top-class sport.

At a conference in Sweden last year, I challenged Arne Ljungqvist, head of the IOC medical commission and a member of Wada, when he poured venom on Ben Johnson as a "traitor" to the athletic ideal for the steroid use that saw the sprinter stripped of his 1988 Olympic gold medal in the 100m. I argued that it was reasonable to believe that most of Johnson's peers had used steroids in some form and at some stage in the development of their bodies. Ljungqvist responded that I had no proof about the others. But I was surprised by the number of people who came up to me afterwards to say they were glad that I had stated the obvious, because they themselves were in no position to do so.


Some of the arguments about doping go right to the core of our concepts of sport and its values. Let me put the deepest of these issues in personal terms. I value two aspects of sport. The most important is participation: I have played a huge variety of sports and games all my life, and the experience of them has added greatly to the meaning and satisfaction of my life. Second, I like to watch and take sides in games such as cricket, football, tennis and snooker; it is important to my interest that these games involve such characteristics as skill, tactics, judgment and courage.

In ordinary participatory sport, neither of these values is threatened by doping. A sportsman or woman who seeks an advantage from drugs just moves up to the level appropriate to his or her underlying ability. When I watch games I want to see the demonstration of human virtues such as vision, risk-assessment and strategic thinking.

Sports scientists talk in terms of the "vulnerability thesis" (as it is called by Sigmund Loland of Oslo University), which suggests that the essence of some sports is far more affected by doping than others. Performance-enhancing drugs mainly fall into two categories: those that increase stamina, and those that increase power. Where performance consists almost entirely of the possession of one of these two characteristics, the principle that "if you don't take it, you won't make it" comes into play. Weightlifting and shot-putting, for instance, are almost pure power, while distance cycling and cross-country skiing are almost pure stamina.

Fourth is definitely a tough place to finish," says Paula Radcliffe. She knows that place well. Four years ago in Sydney, the Briton led the women's 10,000 m for almost the entire distance. Head bobbing, arms pumping, she plunged on and on, looking less like a graceful gazelle than an awkward, if fast, giraffe. A cluster of runners, including two Ethiopians and a Portuguese, dogged her every step. Then, on the final lap, they were gone, whipping past her and shifting into a gear they'd saved for this medal-winning moment, a gear that, on that day, Radcliffe didn't have.

Fourth place doesn't get you gold, silver or bronze but Radcliffe gained steel. "If it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger," she says of the loss. After Sydney and a similar fourth at the 2001 worlds in Edmonton, Canada, she is strong indeed. In the past two years she has broken through to win the Commonwealth title at 5,000 m and the European title at 10,000 m, and stepped up to the marathon, in which she has set two world records in just three races. She has also qualified for the 10,000 m in Athens, but she plans to run only the longer race. A win would cement her place among the greatest female distance runners of all time.

To millions, her grit, spirit and record-breaking runs have already made her a hero. Unfailingly modest, Radcliffe shies from the label. "I see myself exactly the same way as I did when I was starting out at 9 years of age," she says. "Things have changed a little and I compete on a different stage, but I run because I love to run and challenge myself to get the best out of myself." Her attitude is great. Athens will show if it's golden.

The hopes of the host nation rest on the broad shoulders of weight lifter Pyrros Dimas, and, he says, "the pressure is immense." It's a good thing, then, that he's used to Olympic pressure. Dimas topped the podium in Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney, and is one of just two weight lifters in Olympic history to have won three gold medals. (The other is Turkey's Naim Suleymanoglu.) A victory in Athens would make him the first in his sport ever to win four.

Dimas is a legend in his adopted homeland. (He was born to a Greek family in Chimara, Albania, hence his nickname, the Lion of Chimara.) After his first victory, in 1992, thousands packed Athens' Panathinaiko Stadium which hosted the first modern Games in 1896 to welcome him home.

Such staunch support has boosted Dimas' confidence over the years; it's particularly important, he says, since "everything in my sport begins from the mind." But you can't think your arms into lifting 200 kg over your head. Dimas has competed sparingly since the last Olympics and has struggled with both injury and technique. At the European Championships in May, he placed only fourth. "I've learned to overcome pain. I'll try to overcome this situation as well," he says. "You can't mess with nature or God."

Some divine intervention and a win would give him and his country a much-needed lift after all the downbeat reports about Greece's preparations for the Games. "I know that the Greek people will support me whether I do well or not," he says, sounding like he's trying to convince himself as much as anyone else. "I've given it all." Will all be enough? In Athens, we'll see if the weight of a nation's hopes is more than even a giant like Dimas can bear.

Former Olympic gold medalist Jennifer Capriati has decided to skip the 2004 Athens Games, citing a nagging hamstring injury that has plagued her since last month. Lisa Raymond will replace Capriati in the singles draw.

Capriati hasn't competed in the Summer Games since securing her gold medal as a 16-year-old in Barcelona in 1992.

The 28-year-old star withdrew from the JPMorgan Chase Open in Los Angeles last month, citing the hamstring problem.

Raymond, who will also play doubles alongside Martina Navratilova, had been the highest-ranked player in the tournament who wasn't slated to play singles. Raymond is a native of Norristown, Pennsylvania who turned 31 on Tuesday.

The Athens tennis tournament will commence Sunday, with the U.S. women being led by the powerful Williams sisters, Venus and Serena.

One of the world's top DJs will rock the 55,000 crowd at Friday's opening ceremony for the Athens Olympics, Games officials say.

DJ Tiesto, twice voted the world's top DJ by the trade press, will become the first entertainer of his kind to perform at the opening ceremony in the 108-year history of the Games.

"The opportunity to perform my music for billions of people around the globe will be the greatest highlight of my life," Dutchman Tiesto said in a statement on Monday.

"I am honoured to be part of the biggest sports event in the world."

Tiesto will perform a 90-minute live set in the Olympic Stadium during the parade of athletes.

Serena Williams pulled out of the Summer Olympics just hours before she was to travel to Greece with her U.S. tennis teammates.

In New York to catch the team's flight, the six-time Grand Slam singles champion saw a doctor and was told not to compete in Athens because of lingering pain in her left knee, U.S. Tennis Association spokesman Randy Walker said today.

The doctor "advised her that if she were to play, she'd risk serious long-term repercussions on her knee," Walker said.

U.S. coach Zina Garrison, who said last week she expected Williams to play, could not immediately be reached for comment because the team was traveling. They were expected to arrive in Athens this afternoon.

Williams, who earlier this year expressed concern about safety in Athens, withdrew from WTA tournaments in San Diego and Montreal in the past few weeks because of swelling in the knee.

She had surgery to repair a partial tear in her left knee Aug. 1, 2003, and was sidelined for eight months.

The former No. 1-ranked player will be replaced in the singles draw for the Aug. 15-22 Athens tournament by Australia's Samantha Stosur. The No. 96 Stosur, already entered in doubles, was the highest-ranked player in Athens who wasn't in the singles draw.

Teams were allowed to replace players on their rosters until last Saturday.

Williams' withdrawal came a day after 1992 singles gold medalist Jennifer Capriati announced she wouldn't play because of a hamstring injury. Capriati's spot in the Athens singles event was taken by 40th-ranked Lisa Raymond, who's also playing doubles with Martina Navratilova.

By pulling out at the last minute, Williams left her older sister Venus without a doubles partner. The siblings paired to win the doubles gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Games.

Venus, who also won the singles gold four years ago, still could enter the doubles in Athens with Chanda Rubin.

"What's not determined and is being discussed right now on the plane is: Are Chanda and Venus going to play doubles? Presumably, Venus, Chanda and Zina are talking about that," Walker said.

During the WTA event at Key Biscayne, Fla., in March, Serena Williams said she had some concerns about the threat of terrorism during the Olympics.

"My security and my safety and my life are a little bit more important than tennis," she said at the time. "And so if it became a real to concern to where I personally wouldn't feel comfortable, then I wouldn't go to Athens."

The next day, though, Williams said she didn't like the way her remarks were characterized and said: "I'm 100 percent planning on going to Athens."

Asked about the Olympics while she was at Wimbledon in June, Williams said she wanted to know about security plans before heading to Athens.

"There's a lot of stuff going on in the world right now," she said then time, "so we always have to just be careful."