ATHLETICS/US drugs scandal: The shocking revelation that Carl Lewis won two Olympic gold medals in 1988 when he should have been serving a drugs ban means the first three men who crossed the line in that 100 metres race in Seoul have now been implicated in major doping scandals.

The world knows Canada's Ben Johnson, the first to break the tape, failed a drugs test. What has only now emerged is that, when the gold medal went to the second-place finisher Lewis, the American should not have been there because he had tested positive for banned stimulants at the US Olympic trials two months earlier. It means that the rightful winner should have been Britain's Linford Christie, a man who himself had a narrow escape in Seoul and has a colourful doping history.

They were not the only runners in that race with drug-tainted histories. Dennis Mitchell, who would also have benefited if Lewis had not been there, by finishing third instead of fourth, had problems with the dope-busters.

He was later banned for testosterone, despite infamously claiming the test result was from drinking beer and having sex the night before submitting his urine sample.

The disclosure emerged after Dr Wade Exum, the former United States Olympic Committee director for drug control from 1991 to 2000, released more than 30,000 pages of documents relating to cases detailing cover-ups involving some of the biggest American names in Olympic sport.

Lewis was just one of three future gold medallists, along with the 200m winner Joe DeLoach and the 400m hurdle champion Andre Phillips, who tested positive at the Olympic trials in Indianapolis. Lewis, in fact, tested positive three times for small amounts of banned stimulants: pseudoephedrine, ephedrine and phenylpropanola-mine. Under international rules at the time all three athletes should have been suspended for three months.

After first disqualifying Lewis the USOC accepted his appeal on the basis of inadvertent use due to an over-the-counter health tonic. Lewis went on to win gold at Seoul not only in the 100m but also the long jump and finish second to DeLoach in the 200m.

Exum's papers reveal more than 100 positive drug tests involving US athletes from 1988 to 2000. In many cases, he alleged, the athletes were not prevented from competing. Included in the documents are details implicating athletes who won 19 Olympic medals from 1984 to 2000.

The documents prove what the sporting community has long suspected: the US did not take drug testing seriously while accusing the rest of the world, particularly the Soviet Union and East Germany.

Dick Pound, the head of the recently set-up World Anti-Doping Agency, claimed letters purportedly written by the then USOC executive director Baaron Pittenger, advising Lewis, DeLoach and Phillips they had tested positive but were being cleared to compete in Seoul, was proof of a cover-up.

"It sounds like they determined they were going to be accidental even before they notify the guy," he said. "It looks like there was an almost automatic forgiveness for some of these athletes."

It was not just athletes who escaped punishment. Others included the tennis player Mary Joe Fernandez, winner of a gold and a silver medal in Barcelona 1992; the footballer Alexei Lalas and Dave Schultz, a wrestler who won a gold medal in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. All tested positive for stimulants.

It is the fact, however, that Lewis - winner of a record nine Olympic gold medals and the man voted the greatest athlete of the 20th century by the International Association of Athletics Federations - is entangled in a scandal that will send the biggest shockwaves across the sport. He joins Johnson and Christie in a sprinting hall of shame.

Christie narrowly avoided his own three-month doping ban in Seoul after testing positive for pseudoephedrine following his fourth place in the 200m. Two members of the IOC disciplinary committee that heard his case were asleep when they voted on the matter and he scraped through by one vote.

Christie was later banned for two years after testing positive for the anabolic steroid nandrolone. Technically, though, he could claim he would have won a silver medal in the 200m in Seoul if the winner, DeLoach, and the runner-up, Lewis, had been banned. Robson Da Silva, the Brazilian who took the bronze medal, would have an even stronger case if the IOC's rules allowed them to act.

"The rules of the IOC stipulate that no decision taken in the context of the Olympics can be challenged after a period of three years from the day of the closing ceremony," said Giselle Davies, the IOC spokeswoman.

Lewis, throughout his career, presented himself as the moral guardian of the sport. At the US Olympic trials in Sacramento in 2000 he refused to attend a champions dinner in an anti-drugs protest. He used as proof the fact Exum had recently launched a lawsuit against the USOC which alleged officials undermined anti-doping programmes so effectively that half of the American athletes who had tested positive between 1988 and 2000 had not been punished. Yet at no point, especially not in his much-hyped 1990 autobiography Inside Track, has Lewis ever revealed he was part of the cover-up.

Exum had planned to use the documents in his racial discrimination and wrongful termination suit against the USOC but the case was dismissed in court last week due to lack of evidence. "I never wanted to out athletes," said Exum. "I never wanted to name names. Can these names help settle the issue and change the system? We'll see."