(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-12-21 10:08

Bonds has admitted using substances produced by BALCO but always denied any knowledge that they might have been prohibited. His personal trainer Greg Anderson had been jailed on steroid distribution charges and, after his release, was sent back to prison for declining to cooperate in the Bonds investigation.

A report by former Senate majority leader George Mitchell this month named Bonds and former New York Yankee Roger Clemens, his league's top pitcher for a record seven times, as steroid users. "For more than a decade there has been widespread anabolic steroid use," Mitchell told a news conference. "Everybody in baseball shares responsibility."

Another American, cyclist Floyd Landis, was banned from his sport for two years in September after a French laboratory found traces of synthetic testosterone in a sample he provided during the 2006 Tour de France. Landis was the first rider to be stripped of the Tour title.

An unprecedented spate of doping scandals in an already tarnished sport led last month to one of the oldest sponsors, Deutsche Telekom, ending its support of team T-Mobile in order "to separate our brand from further exposure from doping in sport and cycling specifically".

T-Mobile had embraced a policy of zero tolerance, sacking German Patrik Sinkewitz and Italy's Lorenzo Bernucci following positive dope tests and dismissing Ukrainian rider Serhiy Honchar for breach of conduct.

The company's withdrawal came a month after the International Cycling Union (UCI) and WADA announced the creation of the toughest anti-doping measures in sport, taking blood samples from all professional riders next year to create medical profiles which can then be checked after doping tests.

Former Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis admitted he had used doping during his victorious ride in 1996 and fellow Dane Michael Rasmussen was sacked by his Rabobank team as he led this year's Tour for lying about his training program.

Kazakh Alexander Vinokourov was found guilty of blood doping during the race. He and his Astana team were expelled and Vinokourov retired after he was suspended for a year.

The Cofidis team pulled out of the Tour after Cristian Moreni tested positive for excessive testosterone while Erik Zabel, who had won a record six green jerseys on the Tour, also admitted to doping.

Last month, WADA had its first change of president when the outspoken Canadian Dick Pound, who had headed the agency since its inception in 1999, was succeeded by former Australian Finance Minister John Fahey.

Pound had his critics. His flair for the eye-catching phrase and his criticism at various times of USA Track & Field, the National Hockey League and cycling led to a reprimand from the International Olympic Committee.

It could equally be argued that some plain speaking on the cancer of drugs was just what international sport needed.

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