Most expect doping in Olympics

Last updated: Monday, July 28, 2008 Print

Australia’s swimming team captain Grant Hackett says some athletes won’t resist the temptation of drug-cheating for the sake of winning medals at next week’s Beijing Olympics, reports said Monday.

Hackett was among an overwhelming majority of Australia’s Olympic athletes polled in a newspaper who believe the Games will be tainted by doping.

Hackett, who is bidding for an unprecedented three Olympic gold medals in the 1500-metre freestyle event in Beijing, said the lure of Olympic glory will be too difficult for some athletes to resist.

"We would have our heads in the sand to think the Games will be clean and that gets my blood boiling more than anything else in sport," Hackett said. "It would be completely naïve to think these Olympics will be clean, and there will be those athletes who won’t be able to resist cheating for the sake of medals."

Most believe there will be cheating
The newspaper surveyed 100 of the 433-strong Australian team across all sports and found that 76 of them believed there will be drug cheats competing at the Games. But in the same survey only 17 out of the 100 polled thought that Australians will be among the drug cheats.

An 84 percent majority said they were satisfied with anti-doping policy and procedure used for the Games.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge was reported last weekend in a Belgian newspaper as forecasting up to 40 athletes will be caught using performance-enhancing drugs at the Beijing Olympics.

Rogge said he based the number on increased testing and improvements in urinalysis. Officials will perform 4 500 doping tests in Beijing, up from more than 3 500 in Athens and 2 500 in Sydney. There were 26 positive results in Athens and 12 in Sydney. – (Sapa, July 2008)