Seizures of performance-enhancing drugs have soared in the past two years, prompting concerns that overseas sporting teams are stockpiling steroids in the lead-up to the Sydney Olympics.

Australian customs officers said yesterday they made 571 seizures of steroids during the last financial year and that number had already been exceeded in the first nine months of the current financial year.

Last year, Australian Olympic Committee anti-doping manager Craig Fleming, then a senior customs official, warned that Australia could be targeted for large importations of anabolic steroids prior to the 2000 Games. "Sydney, like Los Angeles, Barcelona, Seoul and Atlanta, will be targeted for massive importations of anabolic steroids," he said, adding that there was widespread belief that the Games could be the "dirtiest" in history.

"Elite athletes will need to source products overseas and they will position it at least two years prior to the Olympics Games."

The trade is estimated to be worth four trillion US dollars a year internationally.

His report said Australia's reputation would be damaged irreparably unless immediate action was taken to deal with the issue. Despite the jump in seizures, customs spokesman Leon Bedington said that customs was putting maximum effort into detecting performance-enhancing drugs in the lead-up to and during the Games. The government is pushing to impose jail penalties for drug traffickers importing performance-enhancing drugs as a deterrent, which Fleming said was the right strategy.

"They're not going to bring them in on the last day before competition. You'd be living in never-never land to believe that," he said.

"If you're going to attempt to bring goods in, you're going to have to pre-position them prior to the Olympics because at the present time, it's a golden opportunity and it will be a golden opportunity until such time as the laws are changed."

Meanwhile, top Chinese swimmer Xiong Guoming is facing a life ban from the sport after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs, state media in Beijing have reported.

Xiong, banned in 1994 for two years for steroid use, tested positive in a random test by the international swimming body FINA, the Legal Daily said in an edition seen in Beijing yesterday. The newspaper predicted Xiong would be banned for life.

FINA plans a test of the B sample and a hearing before making a decision on whether or not to punish Xiong, it said.

Xiong was one of seven Chinese swimmers banned for doping after the 1994 Asian Games in Hiroshima. He was stripped of four gold medals he won at the Games but he was back in the pool last December at the Asian Games in Bangkok, winning the men's 200 metre individual medley in a Games record.

If banned, he would be the 10th Chinese swimmer or swimming coach barred from the sport in the past six months over steroids or other drugs.

World cycling star Marco Pantani, who was kicked out of the Tour of Italy last weekend for failing a blood test, claimed yesterday that he never took drugs and was clean.

"I am a clean rider," the 29-yearold Italian told a much-awaited press conference. "My conscience is clear. I have nothing to do with doping. I am one of the few riders in the world who doesn't have a personal trainer. I don't need doping to win races, I need hill climbs."

Pantani, who had been leading the "Giro" on Saturday, was banned from starting the penultimate stage after a test showed his red corpuscle count to be 52 per cent.