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CARL LEWIS WANTS ATHLETES TO JUST SAY NO: Track star hopes Olympic competitors 'step up' and 'take a stand' against steroids.
*In a year that saw Marion Jones and the 2000 US men's 4x400m relay squad stripped of their Olympic medals because of positive drugs tests, track champ Carl Lewis is challenging athletes competing in the Beijing Games to carry the onus in the fight against doping.
"The athletes need to step up and decide that they want to stop the drug problem in their own sport. Until they do that it's going to be an issue," Lewis told AFP. "If the athletes don't want it (doping), they can't stop it but they can eliminate a lot of it.
"For instance, if you're on a relay team, the athletes know who's dirty. Why are you going to run on a relay team that is going to lose a medal in five years?
"It's up to the athletes to say 'I'm not running, I know what you're doing, I know what's going on, if you're on the team I'm not running'. If we tell the athletes it's okay to say 'no more', we're eliminating that but also bringing the competition more fair."
"Take a stand for your sport," urged Lewis, who won 10 Olympic medals including nine golds, and 10 World Championships medals, of which eight were golds, in sprint and long-jump events in an astonishing career that spanned 1979-96.
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