CHRISTIE VOWS TO CLEAR NAME OVER DRUGS TEST

LINFORD CHRISTIE, one of Britain's most outstanding athletes and a
vociferous anti-drugs campaigner, has been suspended from competition after
testing positive for a banned substance.

The 1992 Olympic 100 metres champion failed a drugs test at an indoor
athletics meeting in Dortmund on February 13, testing positive for the
steroid nandrolone, the sport's governing body UK Athletics confirmed
yesterday.

Christie, who at 39 has retired from top-level competition and was
competing "simply to keep in shape", immediately protested his innocence
and pledged to restore his reputation. UK Athletics has ordered an urgent
investigation and will hold a hearing to give Christie a chance to explain
how traces of the drug came to be found in his urine sample.

Christie, now one of Britain's most successful coaches, has always fiercely
denounced drugs in sport, and once called for a life ban for those found
using them. Yesterday he said: "I have consistently opposed the use of
banned substances by athletes and it is ridiculous to imagine that I would
take them after my retirement. When I first heard the news it was a shock.
I'm innocent.

I have done no wrong.

I have never done it. I will never do it." He added that he did not know
how the traces of the drug came to be in his system; it may have occured
"naturally" or through something he had eaten.

Christie's suspension comes a week after Dougie Walker, the European 200
metres champion, was cleared of drug-taking after being tested positive for
nandrolone. He, too, was unable to explain the presence of the steroid, and
the increasing number of sportsmen testing positive for the drug - which
can appear naturally in the body - has prompted demands for testing
procedures to be examined.

Such calls were backed yesterday by both UK Athletics and Christie, who
said: "There should be a full investigation into the numerous cases to
establish how this could happen without the knowledge of the athletes."

Controversy over drugs has been a theme of Christie's career.

He was tested positive at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, but was cleared when the
International Olympic Committee's medical commission accepted that
pseudoephedrine had got into his system through ginseng tea. And last year
he won a libel case against the writer John McVicar who alleged that his
success must have come from banned drugs.