Athletics: Australian athletes will be deliberately injected with a banned performance-enhancing drug to help develop a reliable doping test before the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

Ross Smith, director of sports science at the Australian Institute of Sport, said 22 athletes aged 18 to 35 had volunteered to be given a course of the drug Erythropoiten (EPO) during the next five weeks.

Smith said it was likely AIS scientists will have developed a test for EPO by the end of April and he was confident it would be approved in time for the Sydney Games.

Olympics: International Olympic Committee (IOC) executive board member Kevan Gosper has rejected charges by a US Olympic panel that the IOC had tolerated a "culture of improper gift-giving by cities bidding for the Games.

We do have rules and guidelines in place, we do have protocols in place. The rules relating to bidding have been tightened substantially, year after year, from February 1987."

But Gosper also said the IOC needed to be reformed and suggested all its 111 members stand for re-election every four years.

Sailing: Italian skipper Giovanni Soldini, with French sailor Isabelle Autissier aboard, won the third leg of the solo round-the-world race, into Punta del Este (Uruguay).

Soldini had rescued race leader Autissier when her yacht capsized in the remote Southern Ocean in February.

Soldini covered the third leg trip from Auckland in 25 days 9 hours 55 minutes. The race jury must now meet to decide how much time he lost by going to the rescue of Autissier.

Cycling: France's 1994 world champion Luc Leblanc announced his retirement yesterday.

The 32-year-old, who finished fourth in the 1994 Tour de France, took the decision after he was forced out of the Italian Polti team because of the arrival of French rival Richard Virenque.