by MIKE KING

THERE IS LIKELY to be some positive drug tests at the forthcoming Beijing Olympics, but with monitoring reaching new levels, China may have less cheaters than the Athens Games in 2004.

That's the view of Dick Pound, the foremost fighter over the last decade on the war in drugs in sports.

"I expect there will be some discoveries in Beijing, that some people will get caught. There were about 24 or 25 positive drugs Tests in Athens which is a lot more than before, but we are getting better.

"I hope that there will be fewer positive drug Tests in Beijing because I hope that people will understand that we can catch them now. Certainly, in my country, Canada, we will test everybody, Canada doesn't want somebody on drugs at the Olympics.

"I think that more and more countries will make sure that all or a substantial portion of their team is tested," said Pound, who was here last week as a specially invited guest for the official opening of the Barbados Olympic Centre.

On a mission to clean up drug use in sports, Pound recently retired after an eight-year term as head of the World Anti-Doping Agency from 1999 to the end of 2007. His efforts have made him one of the most renowned and influential leaders in sports and in business.

Pound told the MIDWEEK NATION that the gap is closing on the drug cheating.

"The network is getting better. We have made huge progress. It's kind of society in general. The majority obeys the law, but there is a small percentage who think that it doesn't apply to them and they are above it.

"So we need a police force, a court system and for the really bad guys, we need a prison system. You need the same sort of thing in sport. We want to prevent as much as you can through education, but you also have to have the detective work and the sanctions for the ones you catch."

Pound acknowledged the suspicion is out there that some athletes are beating the tests.

"There is no question about it, there is a suspicion out there. The difficulties over the years with all of the disclosures, the Montgomerys and the Gatlins and so forth, is that you start to look at everybody running fast and wonder if they are on drugs. That's not fair to the ones who aren't on drugs."

Pound said that out of competition testing had become a modern-day necessity.

"A lot of the programmes that athletes used are done before the competitive season. They know they are going to be tested regularly in competition especially if they do well. If you are doing a steroid programme, you are going to do it in the off-season.

"We are going to have to do two things: One, the ability to find them and the other is testers who can go and locate them. That is unfortunately part of sport today, it's the price sport is paying for 40 years of letting this problem get out of control," he said.

Pound, who turned 66 last week, hailed the new Olympic Centre at the Garfield Sobers Sports Copmplex, as a step in the right direction.

"I think it is terrific. Barbadians should be delighted with it. I am certainly delighted with it. It is a terrific use of the space. The combination of the meeting rooms, the offices, the museum, the regional anti-doping organisation, are a big part of sport."

Pound, who spent his honeymoon in Barbados in 1965, was an Olympic swimmer at the Rome Olympics in 1960.

He has been the IOC's top TV rights and sponsorship negotiator since the 1980s. Under Pound's leadership, the IOC has grown into one of the richest sports organisations in the world.