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Athletes hope to banish demons

AFP, Athens
Athletics faces its toughest Olym-pic Games test since the Ben Johnson scandal when the competition gets un-derway here on Friday with com-
petitors under intense pressure to drag the sport out of the mire into which it has slumped.
Their task has been made all the harder with the saga over Greek Olympic medallists Kostadinos Kenteris and Ekaterini Thanou.
Thankfully for the organisers the duo finally caved in and withdrew from the team on Wednesday despite still protesting their innocence over missing a mandatory drugs test.
With the case of world 100 metres champion Torri Edwards also resolved as the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) rejected her appeal against a two-year ban the organisers are hoping the sport can begin.
"Hopefully now the focus will switch onto the sport and the athletes competing in it," International Olympic Committee spokeswoman Giselle Davies said.
It is little wonder that while athletics cleans out its stable of drugstakers -with the stars as vulnerable to detection as the minnows - there are worried brows at the sport's governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).
"We are doing a better job of it than many other federations," an IAAF source said.
"However you have got to laugh that as we clean up the sport we are committing suicide."
Most pressure in the cauldron of an Olympics athletics extravaganza will be on Marion Jones. Clouded by allegations of doping, the former golden girl of the sport will compete in the long jump -- ironically considered the threetime Olympic champion's weakest event - and probably the 4x100m relay.
With most of the athletes implicated in the scandal surrounding the BALCO drugs laboratory, including Jones' boyfriend and 100m world record holder Tim Mont-gomery, failing to qualify for the Games, it will be up to those who have made it here to mount a salvage operation for a sport that has struggled to make an impact Stateside since the end of the Carl Lewis era.
FROM PAGE 13
The US will look to several veterans for glory.
Allen Johnson bids to regain the Olympic 110m hurdles title he won in 1996 but lost in 2000, 37-year-old Gail Devers seeks an elusive 100m hurdles crown after twice winning the 100m flat title while Maurice Greene will try to retain his 100m.
Greene, 30, said the onus falls on the athletes to revive the battered image of the sport.
"The atmosphere is very tough and it is up to the athletes to perform and get rid of some of the negativity," said Greene, who now has the word GOAT (Greatest of All Time) tattooed on his right biceps.
Greene has predicted a United States 1-2-3 with him, Justin Gatlin and Shawn Crawford the medallists, though he has failed to justify that optimism in his European campaign where he went down to defeats to Francis Obikwelu and twice to the up and coming Jamaican Asafa Powell.
While Greene has enjoyed some of his greatest moments in Athens -- his first world title in 1997 and the world
record two years later -- the Kansas Comet has a way to go before he can become the first sprinter since Lewis to retain his title, though Lewis had to rely on Johnson being disqualified in Seoul in 1988 to do that.
For Jones there will be no place to hide as the 28-year-old seeks once again to take part in an Olympics where, for one reason or another, she has a drugs controversy hanging over her.
In Sydney four years ago, it was the revelation that her then husband CJ Hunter had failed several dope tests. She went on and won five medals.
Now with Hunter alleging she used drugs and with meet directors effectively barring her from their meetings, Jones will have to show extraordinary strength of character.
For Johnson, who has fought thrilling duels with the likes of Colin Jackson and Cuba's Olympic champion Anier Garcia in the last decade, it is a chance to stamp his authority on the event.
"I am nerveless when it comes to major championships but this Olympics will be extra special as it is a crown I am seeking to restore to my cabinet," said
the 33-year-old.
The Olympics will also be graced by another of Ethiopia's distance stars in Kenenisa Bekele, who has been told by his federation he has to run in the 5,000m and 10,000m but is likely if they relent to opt for the latter.
If so his compatriot Haile Gebrselassie's remarkable reign will be over.
For the remarkable 22-year-old Bekele, failure would not see the end of his Olympic dream but for Morocco's Hicham El Guerrouj a similar result in the 1,500m would see his hopes of landing the blue riband event in an Olympics terminated after two heartbreaking failures in Atlanta and Sydney.
Noah Ngeny of Kenya deprived him of gold in Sydney. His likeliest nemesis this time is another Kenyan, Bernard Lagat, who beat El Guerrouj in Zurich this month.
Now everyone connected with the sport will be dearly hoping for an Olympics remembered more for results on the track than in the dope testing room.