ATHLETICS: Carl Lewis has been arrested for alleged drink-driving after crashing his sports car, the result, friends claim, of last week's allegations when he was named as one of more than 100 US athletes who had positive drugs tests covered up.

The nine-times Olympic gold medallist was arrested by the Californian highway patrol and charged after tests revealed he had a blood alcohol level of 0.08 - the state's legal limit - after a crash in which he wrecked his Maserati in the early hours of Monday morning in Los Angeles.

Friends say Lewis was depressed after the release of documents by Dr Wade Exum, the former anti-doping officer of the US Olympic Committee, saying he had tested positive three times at the 1988 Olympic trials in Indianapolis for small traces of stimulants.

It should have resulted in a ban preventing him from competing in the Seoul games, where he won two gold medals, including the 100 metres, but the USOC failed to follow international rules in operation at the time and allowed him to compete. Lewis has denied the allegations.

Since retiring from athletics in 1997 he has virtually cut himself off from the sport, turning down lucrative offers to work as a television commentator and labelling the sport "boring". It is a decision friends say he now regrets and one made worse by the fact that the latest revelations mean it is unlikely anyone will want to employ him.

He has instead concentrated on trying to build an acting career in Hollywood but he has failed to make much impression. Lewis, who has taken acting lessons, said on his retirement that he was determined to avoid being typecast in the role of a sportsman and said he would like the opportunity to star in films where he acts the hardman.

"I'd love to do a role which is different to my public persona," he said at the time. "I've been pretty calm and low-key and focused, and I'd like to do something that shows the other side of my character - excitable, angry, tough." His most recent role was in a science fiction film entitled Alien Hunter, in which he played a communications officer. It has been panned by critics, as was his previous film Atomic Twister, in which he played a security guard.

Lewis has instead found himself in the news for reasons he would rather have avoided as athletes and administrators have called for an inquiry into Exum's allegations.

Australia's David Culbert, who competed against Lewis in the long jump in 1988 and is now a senior official with his national federation, said that it was the apparent hypocrisy of the American which was the most surprising aspect of the whole affair. "Given that he's been so strident in his comments about other athletes who have taken performance-enhancing drugs, if (the allegations) are true then he's lived a pretty strong lie," Culbert said. It is that kind of criticism which has left Lewis feeling so depressed, friends claim.

He was tried and acquitted on a drink-driving charge in 1991. He is scheduled to appear in court in Los Angeles on July 7th on this latest charge. He was unavailable for comment. Guardian Service