Devers and Moore called up by USA

Gail Devers and LaShaunte’a Moore will replace Torri Edwards, the USA’s suspended world champion, in the Olympic 100 and 200 metres races in Athens.

The pair, who finished fourth in last month’s US Olympic trial races, were always expected to step into the vacant slots if Edwards’ appeal to the Court of Arbitration in Sport against a drugs suspension failed.

Devers, who is chasing a first-ever 100m hurdles crown, won the 100m flat gold medals in 1992 and again four years later. Moore is this year’s American college champion.

The CAS last week upheld the two-year ban imposed by the US Anti-Doping Agency on Edwards, who had claimed she unknowingly used banned substances when a drugs test revealed the presence of nikethamide at a meeting in Martinique last April.

The Team USA announcement finally quashed any chance that Marion Jones, who was fifth in the trial race, would defend her 100m title this weekend.

Jones, winner of three gold and two bronze medals in Sydney four years ago, is scheduled to compete only in the long jump.

But the loss of Edwards might see the USA selectors add her to the 4x100m relay squad and even consider her for the 4x400m event, where she got a medal in the last Games.