IOC must take action

Andreea Raducan (centre) leaves the court of Arbitration

Despite the success of the Sydney games, BBC Sport's Gordon Farquhar believes the IOC must be more consistent in all cases surrounding the use of drugs.

The Five Live radio sport team based out in Sydney had a bit of a competition going.

Written up on the magic marker board in the office was a league table of commentators. They scored points every time the Brits got a medal in their sport.

Unfortunately, I was the winner. I got points every time an athlete was sent home for failing a drug test.

Ok, it was a bit of ironic fun, and thankfully none of the offenders was British, but lets say I never had a dull day in Sydney.

Two worrying patterns have emerged. Firstly that the vast majority of positive tests came from the former Soviet-bloc countries.

Raducan's bodyweight was so low, she didn't metabolise the stuff quickly enough and therefore registered a positive

  Gordon Farquhar

Romania and Bulgaria were the worst offenders. Want to know why the diminutive gymnast Andreea Raducan was kicked out for taking a cold cure?

Behind the IOC's tough line is the suspicion that some team doctors were giving all the gymnasts the same daily dose, regardless of their state of health.

Ibuprofen

The cold cure involved contains Ibuprofen, a pain-killer that also acts as an anti-inflammatory. Quite handy in a sport that hammers the joints.

The pseudoephidrine that was her undoing helps you breathe more easily and get more oxygen into your system.

Raducan's bodyweight was so low, she didn't metabolise the stuff quickly enough and therefore registered a positive.

Most athletes would have got away with it and that's the point. The team doctor was banned from involvement in the Olympics for four years after he admitted he'd given her the tablets by mistake.

Really? You decide. The IOC has. It's also decided to look at why so many positives came from the former communist states.

Perhaps in sports circles the old habits die hard, and they're fading slowest in the second major problem area, weightlifting.

I forget now whether it was seven or eight positives and frankly, I lost count. Weightlifting wants to be taken seriously.

The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) insists it's doing more than anyone to clean up its sport.

It tested all 257 competitors before the Games, so why are some still taking the risk?

Lack of respect

A total lack of respect for the authority of the governing body?

Perhaps it's all the IWF deserves after the farce of the expulsion of the Romanian and then the Bulgarian teams, only for their "clean" athletes to be re-admitted upon payment of a fine.

Clearly, no-one wanted them in Sydney, but the IWF regulations allowed it, and there was little anyone else could do about it.

Weightlifting isn't the only sport where regulations aren't having the desired effect, and this time it's the United States who are at fault.

CJ Hunter: Innocent until proven guilty?

The case of CJ Hunter has drawn attention to an anomaly that is simply unacceptable.

US Track and Field (UST&F) feel obliged to ignore the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) rules on doping procedure, under the pressure of their own litigious civil law structure.

The IAAF says quite rightly that an athlete who tests positive, and who is judged to have a case to answer, ought to be prevented from competing until the matter's resolved.

According to the IAAF, CJ Hunter failed drug tests at three separate meetings during the European Grand Prix season.

He should have been suspended, but UST&F doesn't do that until the lengthy appeals process is exhausted. Innocent until proven guilty they say.

Sponsor's dollars

But the problem is that allows athletes who know they're cheating to keep turning up, taking the medals, the prize money and the sponsor's dollars and then retire when the courts finally catch up with them.

It's an affront to every clean athlete, and there's now a battle looming which the IAAF will be determined to win.

By common consent, this was the greatest games of the modern era, and that goes for the significant strides taken in catching the drug cheats.

Yet despite all the advance warnings about how seriously drug abuse would be taken in Sydney, many still took a chance.

Athens may struggle to live up to the standards set by the Sydney games, but at least they know in doping control, there's still the scope for improvement.