TOP 10 DRUGS CHEATS

Alex Rodriguez was the cleanest name in baseball, the man to take back
the home-run record with an apple-pie smile and no juice in his veins.
But then the truth came out - A-Rod was as crooked as a Texan
billionaire with an English cricketer's wife on his knee. Steve Deane
and Winston Aldworth look at the hall of shame he has entered.

1: A-Rod becomes A-Fraud

Alex Rodriguez was going to be the man to lead America out of the era
of steroids, corked bats and tainted records and into a bold new world
of honesty, integrity and all-round goodness. He was going to do it on
nothing more than apple pie and natural talent. And, as it turned out,
three years of twice monthly steroid injections, followed by six years
of bare-faced lying.

"I knew we weren't taking Tic Tacs," baseball's highest paid player
and odds-on favourite to break Barry Bonds' already tainted home run
mark finally admitted this week after being outed by Sports
Illustrated. Although just one of 104 major league players to test
positive for not taking Tic Tacs in 2003 at a time when doing so
wasn't banned in baseball, the reputation of the best player of a
generation is in tatters.

"If this is Humpty Dumpty, we've got to put him back together again,
to get back up on the wall," Yankees' general manager Brian Cashman
said of his US$275 million ($537.5 million) public relations disaster.
Humpty Dumpty insisted he had never knowingly taken any illegal
substances and would be consulting his lawyer about Cashman's comments
linking him to the scandal.

Video: US President Barack Obama says A-Rod scandal is 'depressing'

2: Ben Johnson

The most-famous drug cheat in Olympic history was, in fact, little or
no worse than the men who ran alongside him. Four of the top five
finishers including Ben Johnson in the 1988 Olympic 100m race all
tested positive for banned drugs at some point in their careers: Carl
Lewis (who ultimately bagged the gold), Linford Christie (who landed
the silver) and Dennis Mitchell all dabbled.

But it was Johnson who become the focal point for condemnation of drug
cheats.

He set a new 100m world record of 9.79 seconds, but the glory lasted
just three days before he tested positive for the anabolic steroid
Stanozolol.

Johnson's coach, Charlie Francis, vehemently denies his runner had
taken Stanozolol - he much preferred Furazabol.

Video: Ben Johnson breezes to Olympic gold in Seoul

3: Barry Bonds

In 10 days' time, Barry Bonds will be in court defending charges of
obstruction of justice and perjury. The charges allege Bonds lied when
he told a Grand Jury investigating steroid lab Balco that he had never
used performance-enhancing substances.

Bonds' steroid use has never been proven and he maintains remarkable
changes in his physique were down to taking, er, flax-seed oil. Not
everyone believes him.

"If Barry Bonds has never taken steroids then I've never danced around
naked with a lampshade on my head," one contributor to a Bonds hate
website (yes, there are a few) opined.

In fairness to Bonds, he was unpopular enough to receive frequent
death threats long before the drugs allegations that have haunted his
every step since he beat Hank Aaron's mark of 733 to become baseball's
all time dinger leader. "Barry Bonds' public persona is that of a
self-centred, arrogant, race-obsessed egoist," said the bloke with the
lampshade on his head.

4: Michelle Smith

Some things are just too good to be true. Such as the rise of Michelle
Smith (later De Bruin) from an ageing, off-the-pace swimmer to a
triple gold medallist - Ireland's first in the pool - in Atlanta in
1996.

Marrying Dutch field athlete Erik de Bruin, who was suspended in 1993
for returning unnaturally high testosterone levels, didn't do much for
Smith's reputation.

Nor did the accusations of vanquished American rival Janet Evans at a
press conference after her defeat.

Her repeated unavailability for random testing only heightened
suspicions about her behaviour and two years after the Games Smith was
finally banned after providing a urine sample that had been diluted
with whisky. A Fina statement at the time said the sample contained
"unequivocal signs of adulteration" - a bit like the record books,
then, as Smith was never stripped of her medals.

5: Floyd Landis

The 2006 Tour de France winner hoped to usher in an era of drug-free
cycling. Sadly he was stripped of the title after returning a drug
test following the tough 17th stage that suggested he had roughly the
same amount of testosterone coursing through his veins as the entire
US Marine Corp.

His cycling team, Phonak, sacked him immediately, but the scandal was
rolling. Soon Phonak was disbanded, a swag of other cyclists were
busted and the sport's reputation hit its lowest ebb. Thanks Floyd.

6: Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery

Once upon a time Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery were the king and
queen of the sprint world. They both held world records, fistfuls of
medals and even produced a son, Tim Jr.

Then came BALCO, The Clear, a couple of white lies to some federal
investigators, jail, a cheque fraud and money-laundering scheme, more
jail, and, finally, for Montgomery, five years in the clink for
dealing heroin. Oh, and they both had to give all of their medals back.

It wasn't all bad news for Jones though, who did manage to wrangle an
appearance on Oprah where she informed the American people that she
would have cleaned up in Sydney with or without the help of
Tetrahydrogestrinone. Make yours a Tui, Marion? No worries.

Video: Marion Jones admits steroid use

7: Florence Griffith-Joyner

Florence Griffith-Joyner dropped dead in September 1998, just 10 years
after she had blasted down the track at the Seoul Olympics, setting a
200m world record of 21.34sec that still stands.

Flo Jo never failed a drugs test - it was her own brilliance that
damned her. Going into the 1988 season, her best 100m time was a
respectable 10.96 seconds. In the space of a few months she knocked it
down by a scarcely credible by 0.47 seconds, to set a record no one
has approached since.

Her secret? Healthy living, she said. But Griffith-Joyner's decision
to retire from track and field after her 1988 Olympic triumphs came
with the knowledge that mandatory random drug testing was about to be
implemented throughout the sport.

8: Ekaterini Thanou

Up there with "the dog ate my homework", the old "we had a motorbike
crash, so missed our drugs test" line buys little sympathy.

Greek sports fans were horrified when, on the eve of the 2004
Olympics, Ekaterini Thanou and her training partner Konstantinos
Kenteris were hospitalised in a motorcycle crash.

Cynics quickly spotted a fraud.

The pair - miraculously unhurt in the "crash" - had failed to attend a
drugs test earlier in the evening.

Ironically, Thanou stands to benefit from the hounding of drug cheat
Marion Jones. The Greek finished second to Jones in Sydney 2000 and is
in line to be awarded the American's gold medal should the powers that
be deem the win to be tainted.

9: Marco Pantani

Perhaps the most popular drugs cheat of all time. Twenty thousand
people attended the funeral of the man known as The Pirate after he
died of a cocaine overdose in 2004.

Rated the greatest hill climber of all time, in 1998 the colourful
Italian won the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France. A year later he
was disqualified when leading the Giro for returning an unnaturally
high red blood cell count - an indicator of EPO use.

Pantani drifted out of cycling and into depression. The last entry in
his diary was: "For four years I've been in every court, I just lost
my desire to be like all the other sportsmen, but cycling has paid and
many youngsters have lost their faith in justice. All my colleagues
have been humiliated, with TV cameras hidden in their hotel rooms to
try and ruin families. How could you not hurt yourself after that?"

10: Jose Canseco

In his first tell-all book, Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash
Hits & How Baseball Got Big, slugger Jose Canseco claimed former
girlfriend Madonna was infatuated with him but that he was never really
that into her. Oh, and that 85 per cent of Major League baseballers used
steroids.

He also claimed to have personally injected single-season home run
recordholder Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro and Ivan Rodriguez.

At the time his claims were widely rubbished, discredited as the
rantings of a bitter attention-seeker. Canseco has been working on a
second book that includes accusations about A-Rod. It has a much
shorter title than his first: Vindicated.