Athletics: Leading Olympic athletes, coaches and officials have called for an open investigation into allegations of a drugs cover-up by the US, dating back to the 1988 Seoul Games.

Documents released in the US earlier this week suggest 19 Olympic medallists, including multiple champion Carl Lewis, failed drugs tests between 1988 and 2000 but were allowed to continue competing.

Lewis is said to have tested positive for three stimulants banned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), including ephedrine, shortly before he was due to compete at the Seoul Olympics in 1988.

Lewis won nine Olympic gold medals, including one for the 100 metres in Seoul, in what became one of the most infamous races in sporting history, after Canada's Ben Johnson was stripped of the title and his world record of 9.79 seconds was disallowed when he tested positive for steroids.

Lewis now joins Britain's Linford Christie in drugs allegations relating to that race.

Christie, promoted from third to second in the race after Johnson's positive test, was given what the IOC described as "the benefit of the doubt" when pseudoephedrine, a stimulant, was found in his sample.

Christie contended that the stimulant was contained in the ginseng supplements he had been taking while Lewis's lawyer, Martin Singer, said his athlete had no intent.

According to the documents, the US Olympic Committee (USOC) disqualified Lewis, but then accepted his appeal on the basis that he had taken a herbal supplement and was unaware of its contents.

Lewis received a warning after US officials ruled his positive tests were due to "inadvertent" use.

"Carl did nothing wrong," said Singer. "There was never intent. He was never told: 'You violated the rules'."

The documents, in which the identities of more than 100 athletes were disclosed, were released to Sports Illustrated magazine and the Orange County Register newspaper by Wade Exum, the USOC's director for drug control between 1991 and 2000.

However, USOC has said Exum's claims were groundless because he had planned to use them in a law suit against USOC for racial discrimination and wrongful dismissal. Exum's case was dismissed in court through lack of evidence.

USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel has said the organisation sees no reason for an audit or review, and that there was no evidence that any of the cases were mishandled.

He added that the new US Anti-Doping Agency and the World Anti-Doping Agency were formed in 2000 because of the same problems revealed in the documents.

"For the first time in history, the standards, protocols and sanctions for anti-doping programs will be consistent," he said.

However American sprinter Evelyn Ashford, who won the women's Olympic 100 metres in 1984 and was runner-up in 1988, is one of several athletes who has called for a review of the test results, with the findings made public.

"It should all be done in the open," Ashford was quoted as saying in the Orange County Register where the allegations were first made public. "They should clean up the mess that they made.

"For so many years, I lived it. I knew this was going on, but there's absolutely nothing you can do as an athlete.

"You have to believe the governing bodies are (doing) what they are supposed to do, and it is obvious that they did not."

Dick Pound, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said yesterday: "The more the world knows, and the US public knows, what the USOC was doing, the more likely they are to fix the problem."

Track and field, the central sport of the Olympic Games, has never recovered from the Johnson affair in 1988.

The following year the Canadian government set up the Dubin inquiry, named after Charles Dubin, an associate chief justice of the Ontario Supreme Court who was in charge of the investigation.

The evidence of Johnson's coach Charlie Francis and Johnson's doctor Jamie Astaphan was devastating. They said Johnson had been taking drugs since 1981, including anabolic steroids, testosterone and diuretics, used as masking agents, plus human growth hormone.