PAULA RADCLIFFE has said that athletes who fail drug tests should be treated as criminals and given penalties to match. In the wake of further accusations in America that have rocked the world of athletics, Britain’s world record-holder in the women’s marathon said existing penalties were not tough enough.

“Doping in sport is a criminal offence and should be treated as such,” she said. “It not only cheats other athletes but also cheats promoters, sponsors and the general public. Being caught with performance-enhancing drugs should carry a penalty.”

The comments from one of sport’s most outspoken campaigners against doping come after Victor Conte, the former head of Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (Balco), told a TV programme in America that former Olympic sprint champion Marion Jones, 100m record-holder Tim Montgomery and sprinter Kelli White had all taken drugs supplied by Balco. Conte has been indicted over allegations that he supplied steroids and performance-enhancing drugs to Jones and Montgomery.

Radcliffe said: “As an athlete, I invest most of my energy and time in my quest to be the best distance runner in the world. However, today our sport and others are tainted by the doping cloud. The current system does not detect many of the substances being abused by athletes. This means that often athletes do not know if they are competing on a level playing field, if their hard work and sacrifice is being trumped by an easier scientific route.

“Often, when an athlete puts in a good performance, they are subjected to suspicion and innuendo instead of praise. Having been on the receiving end of accusations like this, I can testify as to how much this hurts and angers the athlete.

“I am certainly prepared to support organisations such as World Anti-Doping Agency, UK Sport and the International Amateur Athletics Association in any way possible to be able to prove myself and avoid such situations as, I am sure, are many others,” she added on the website www.paularadcliffe.com.

“What we really need is a doping control system in which the world can believe and trust. This needs to be effective worldwide, out of competition and at all competitions on all surfaces, so that cheating athletes cannot hide away or search out the ‘small’ meets with no testing in order to record outstanding performances.”

Sport deals with drugs offenders in different ways. Some national federations penalise culprits with nothing more than a warning, while bans ranging from three months to two years are more common. Life bans are rare.

Jerome Young, the American sprinter, was banned for life last month after testing positive for EPO in July, the second time he had failed a test in his career.

The Great Britain 4x100m relay team that won silver at the world championships in Paris in 2003 were stripped of their medals when Dwain Chambers, who had run the anchor leg, was later found to have tested positive for the designer steroid THG prior to the competition. He was banned for two years.

Laws relating to sport vary in different countries but no athlete has been sentenced by a court for taking performance-enhancing substances. In Italy, there is a law called “sporting fraud”, which covers all illegal sporting activities, but nobody has been jailed for taking drugs to improve performance.

However, those who provide drugs to people involved in sport have been found guilty. Last month, the Juventus club physician Riccardo Agricola was given a suspended jail term of 22 months for giving banned substances to the team’s players during the 1990s.