World Anti-Doping Agency chairman Richard Pound promised Monday that all athletes competing at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics will be clean, a pledge that appeared to be aimed at quelling uncertainty over the 2000 Sydney Games in which athletes reportedly participated despite failing doping tests.

Pound also called on the world governing athletics body to expel the U.S. federation for refusing to release names of athletes testing positive for drugs. Speaking four days before the opening ceremony of the Salt Lake City Olympics, Pound said some names had been on the list of U.S. tests for 30 months.

The highest-profile drug case in Sydney involved former shot put champion C.J. Hunter, the husband of triple Olympic gold medallist Marion Jones. Hunter, who withdrew before the Games with injury, tested positive four times for the anabolic steroid nandrolone during 2000.

In other Olympic news, a Latvian bobsledder has appealed a decision by the International Olympic Committee to ban him from the Winter Olympics because of a positive drug test.

The appeal by Sandis Prusis now goes before the Court of Abritration, a panel designed to keep eligibility disputes out of the courts.

A hearing was set for Monday night, less than two weeks before bobsled competition starts at the Games. It was the first drug case before the International Olympic Committee in Salt Lake City.

Prusis tested positive for the steroid nandralone after a December 9 training run at the Olympic track in Park City, Utah. The bobsled federation banned Prusis on January 7 from World Cup competition and the Olympics.

Some information for this report provided by AP, DPA and Reuters.

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