News had been leaked at the World Championships held at the Paris track that Kelli White, the American winner of the 100m and 200m, had tested positive for a little-known stimulant called modafinil. White looked the assembled press corps in the eye and told them: "The mere fact of this allegation is personally harmful and hurtful I have never taken any substance to enhance my performance. "I wish they had told me to bring some snacks," she says, ravenous after her evening's efforts (she had earlier placed seventh in the 100m), as though her mother might have packed her off to the big-league competitions with a lunch-box and flask tucked under her arm.Then someone asks the question: "Did you hear about C J Hunter accusing Marion Jones of taking drugs?" Welcome to the big, bad world of track and field, Muna.The wide-eyed, willowy slip of a sprinter does her best to address the burning issue. "I don't have a phone card or anything."Lee, it transpires, has pitched up on the European circuit like some novice at a school sports meeting, having finished second in the US Olympic trials and booked her place in the starred-and-striped team for Athens. "To me, if she did do it, I figure it was in the past," Lee says. "She would have to get off of it to have a baby, or it would affect the baby."I figure she's clean now But if she did take it, it's kind of messed up.. I don't know I don't have much of an opinion on it I'm still running with them either way I run just as fast, whether they're on it or not. "I just ran."She ran so swiftly, in fact, she finished comfortably clear of Debbie Ferguson, the Bahamian who held off Marion Jones on the anchor leg of the 4 x 100m relay at the Sydney Olympics four years ago, and Muriel Hurtis, the reigning European 200m champion from France She was roared home by a crowd of 63,581 "I just wish I could call home and tell somebody," she says.

She has just won the women's 200m in the Gaz de France Golden League meeting "I don't know how I did it," she says. It is Friday night in the Stade de France, and deep in the bowels of the Parisian arena a young American athlete is blinking nervously in the glare of the international media spotlight. Muna Lee is 22 She speaks in a halting southern drawl. She is clearly not as accustomed to such attention as another native of Little Rock, Arkansas: one William Jefferson Clinton.It is her first time out of the States, she says, her first experience of international track-and-field competition. Dennis Mitchell Event: 100m, 200mOlympics: 1992, 1996Nationality: AmericanOffence: high levels of testosterone were found in Mitchell's system in 1998. The sprinter tried to justify this by claiming he got drunk and had sex with his wife four times the night before the test The IAAF didn't believe him: he was banned for two years.. Two days later, Johnson was stripped of both his medal and the record after testing positive.

Since random drug-testing was started, the 20m mark has rarely been passed. Florence Griffith-Joyner Event: 100m, 200mOlympics: 1984, 1988Nationality: AmericanOffence: smashed the women's 100 metre world record at Seoul, and won two other golds. "Flo-Jo" never failed a drugs test but when she died of heart failure at the age of 38 in 1998, many saw it as the legacy of long-term drug abuse. Ben Johnson Event: 100mOlympics: 1984, 1988Nationality: CanadianOffence: exposed as a user of the banned anabolic steroid stanazolol after winning the 100 metre final in Seoul. Johnson won the race in a world record 9.79 seconds, beating Carl Lewis. Despite collapsing during the race and finishing it in a stupor, Hicks won the gold medal. Ilona Slupianek Event: shot putOlympics: 1980Nationality: East GermanOffence: of the many East German athletes exposed to anabolic steroids in the 70s and 80s, she was the only one caught.