Entire Aussie Olympic team under drug cloud

1.00pm

The naming of the Australian Olympic team has been put on hold until every member of the team is checked for connections with drug taking.

The head of the Australian Olympic Committee, John Coates, has ordered background checks of the team, expected to number around 470, and put on hold
the naming of further athletes for Athens.

The Australian Sports Drug Agency (ASDA) today issued an all-clear for existing and potential Olympic team members for drug taking.

But Customs is cross-checking their records for any information which may indicate that athletes from the Australian teams in Sydney, Athens and the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City may have committed a doping offence.

Coates' move was taken after Dick Pound, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, criticised the way that the French scandal was handled. A weightlifter, Caroline Pileggi, was thrown off the team last week for failing to take a drugs test.

It also follows news that Australian sprint cyclist Sean Eadie, who won the world sprint title in 2002, was served with an infraction notice yesterday relating to a package of tablets sent to him from San Diego, California, in 1999.

Eadie may be expelled from the forthcoming Athens Games and stripped of his 2000 Olympic bronze medal for allegedly smuggling human growth hormones into the country.

The 16 tablets - containing anterior pituitary peptides, a banned substance - were intercepted by the Australian Customs Service and destroyed. Customs officers wrote to Eadie, 35, but did not receive a reply. Because of privacy legislation that has since been amended, they could not inform Cycling Australia or other sporting bodies of their discovery.

The incident has now come to light as part of the fall-out from a drugs scandal surrounding Australian cycling. The junior world champion Mark French was banned from cycling for two years and from the Olympics for life after being found guilty last month of trafficking a prohibited substance and possessing an equine growth hormone.

French claims that his room at Adelaide's Australian Institute of Sport cycling headquarters was used as a "shooting gallery" by five elite cyclists who injected vitamins, steroids and growth hormones. Eadie was one of those named by French, as was Jobie Dajka, whose Olympic place has been put on hold pending an investigation.

It was after the French inquiry that Olympic officials asked Customs to cross-check their previous files to see if any athletes' names came up.

Dajka, another former Australian world champion, is being investigated for an alleged doping offence involving equine growth hormones.

Cycling Australia said Eadie had not tested positive for any banned substance, and he denied all knowledge of the pills. "Never used them. Never imported them. Never even thought of or tried to import them or use them," he told the Nine television network. "It's against the very philosophy I have in sport."

Coates said Eadie had been advised that he was believed to have breached the 1999 anti-doping polices of the AOC and Cycling Australia.

"If he doesn't successfully defend these allegations, then certainly the IOC [International Olympic Committee] would take back the medal he won in 2000, and any subsequent achievements or medals he had would be at risk," Coates said.

He called on Cycling Australia to suspend Eadie from the Athens team and nominate someone else in his place. Eadie has 14 days to lodge an appeal against the infraction notice. If found guilty, he could face a two-year ban.

- INDEPENDENT