Nike is ending its Oregon Project supporting elite track athletes after a top coach was banned for violating anti-doping rules in a scandal that has engulfed the sport’s biggest corporate backer.

USA Track & Field will send a drug-free team to Beijing next month for the Olympic Games, according to the governing body’s acting chief executive Bill Roe.

MARION JONES may still win her ticket to Athens but the great leveller that is the US Olympic trials has seen to it that she will be a mere bit-part player when the Games get under way next month.

Dwain Chambers has been joined by two more Americans to have tested positive for the new designer drug which is rocking athletics.

American athletics chiefs admit they are in a Catch 22 situation after announcing a "Zero Tolerance" campaign against drugs abuse in the sport.