LEADING Olympic athletes and officials are calling for an open investigation into allegations of a drugs cover-up by the United States after the release of documents purporting to show that several gold medal-winners, including Carl Lewis, failed drugs tests between 1988 and 2000.

Lewis is said to have tested positive three times at the 1988 US Olympic trials for small amounts of banned stimulants found in cold cures. According to the documents, the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) disqualified him but accepted his appeal on the basis of inadvertent use.

Lewis won nine Olympic gold medals, including one for the 100 metres in Seoul in 1988 after Ben Johnson, of Canada, had been stripped of the title for a positive steroid test. Under the international rules of the time, the use of banned stimulants carried an automatic three-month suspension.

Lewis now joins Johnson and Linford Christie in drugs allegations relating to that race. Christie, the Briton who was promoted from bronze to silver medal-winner after Johnson was disqualified, was given what the International Olympic Committee described as “the benefit of the doubt” when pseudoephedrine, a stimulant, was found in his sample.

Christie had argued that the stimulant was contained in the ginseng supplements he had been taking. Joe Douglas, Lewis’s manager, said that his athlete had never taken performance-enhancing drugs. In fact, Lewis has been a longstanding outspoken critic of drug abuse.

Other American champions in Seoul identified as having failed tests, but who were let off by the USOC, include Joe DeLoach, winner of the 200 metres, and Andre Phillips, who took the gold in the 400 metres hurdles. DeLoach was Lewis’s training partner and, according to the documents, tested positive for the same stimulants.

Dick Pound, the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, has dismissed claims of inadvertent use. That defence did not, after all, allow Alain Baxter, the Great Britain skier, to keep his bronze medal from the 2002 Winter Olympics. He used an inhaler for medical reasons, but it was ruled that he should have known its contents.

“At the time this happened, Carl Lewis already had four gold medals from the Olympics,” Pound said. “You know perfectly well you have got to be very careful what you take. The offence is the presence of the substance in your body.” Pound added that all the details from the files should be made known.

“The more the world knows, and the US public knows, what the USOC was doing, the more likely they are to fix the problem.” More than 30,000 pages of documents, in which the athletes’ identities are disclosed, were released to Sports Illustrated, an American magazine, and to the Orange County Register newspaper.

They were released by Dr Wade Exum, the USOC director for drug control from 1991 to 2000. The USOC said that Exum’s accusations were groundless. Since he threatened these revelations, it has portrayed him as a disgruntled employee whose job was in jeopardy when he left.

“I find it ironic that Dr Exum was actually running the programme he claims was so flawed,” Frank Marshall, the USOC vice president, said. “When USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency) was created three years ago, he was out of a job. It is now considered to be one of the best anti-doping programmes in the world, so what’s his point?” Exum claims that in excess of 100 positive tests were conducted on American sportsmen and women, including 19 medal-winners. He had planned to use the documents in his racial discrimination and wrongful dismissal case against the USOC, but it was dismissed in court through lack of evidence.

Also named is Mary Joe Fernandez, the American tennis player who won three medals in 1992 and 1996. The documents show that Fernandez tested positive for pseudoephedrine at a WTA event in Miami in 1992, but she said it was attributable to a cold cure. “I have always tried to live an upright and moral life and for something to come out that is not true is disappointing,” she said. “I think the doctor is lashing out now because he did not win his case.”

However, Evelyn Ashford, the American who won the women’s Olympic 100 metres in 1984 and was runner-up in 1988, is among those calling for a review. “It should all be done in the open,” she said. “They should clean up the mess they made. For so many years I lived it. I knew this was going on.”

The top four in 1988

1st BEN JOHNSON (Canada)
Disqualified from 1988 Olympic 100 metres after steroids test; three positive tests later, he is now personal trainer to Soad Gaddafi, Libyan leader’s son

2nd CARL LEWIS (US)
Winner of nine Olympic gold medals and a record eight World Championship titles; last heard of making B movies, including Atomic Twister and Alien Hunter

3rd LINFORD CHRISTIE (GB)
1992 Olympic 100 metres champion and 1993 world champion; tested positive for nandrolone in 1999; went on to coach young British athletes

4th CALVIN SMITH (US)
Set 100 metres world record in 1983; 200 metres world champion in 1983 and 1987; present whereabouts and occupation unknown