Swimming, diving and athletics have been rocked by further drug abuse scandals in the last 48 hours. Four world-class swimmers, two divers and a marathon runner have all been banned from competition by their respective sporting bodies for differing lengths of time after all tested positive for banned substances.

Long distance swimmers David Meca Medina of Spain and Igor Majecen of Slovenia have been banned from competition for four years after testing positive for the steroid nandrolone, the world governing body FINA said yesterday.

Nandrolone has been implicated in a number of positive drugs tests over a range of sports in the past two years, including Czech tennis player Petr Korda and France's World Cup striker Christophe Dugarry.

Medina and Majcen tested positive at the marathon swimming World Cup in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, on January 31st this year. They had both competed in the 25 kms event.

In a statement, FINA said two divers had also been suspended. Russian Yulia Pakhalina was suspended for two months after testing positive for caffeine and American Tracy Bonner has been suspended for one year after a positive test for the stimulant dextroamphetamine.

FINA yesterday also handed two Chinese swimmers three-year bans after they failed drugs tests for the second time.

The Chinese duo Wang Wei and Xiong Guoming, who have also been disqualified from all the competitions they have participated in since March 8th this year. Both tested positive for clenbuterol.

All six have a month to appeal against their sentences.

Meanwhile, Spanish marathon runner Julio Rey has been banned for two years after two positive drugs tests, the Spanish Athletics Federation said yesterday. Rey tested positive for the banned steroid mestrelone in March, following his run in the Spanish cross country championships.

He then tested positive for mestrelone again at the Rotterdam marathon in April. Rey had earlier been suspended pending the Spanish federation hearing.

The news of these positive tests comes only days after former Olympic 100 metres champion and British athletics legend Linford Christie tested positive for the performance-enhancing drug nandrolone. Christie received much support from the athletics fraternity and although the accuracy of the result was questioned in many quarters, and Christie pleaded his innocence, the issue of drug abuse in sport has reared its ugly ahead in public once again and will undoubtedly raise further doubt about the legitimacy of some of the better performances in athletics and swimming.