Former Olympic champion Shane Gould said the pilot project could be a forerunner to a compulsory system in which only athletes with clean passports could compete in top events. She said the introduction of passports was a practical way of creating an open and honest system transparent to sports officials, administrations and sponsors. Everyone wants the Olympics to be run cleanly and honestly. It's a disappointment when our athletes are brought down. Ms Kapernick said that to succeed, the passports proposal needed support from athletes.
All athletes feel tainted by allegations of drug cheating.
We are giving them a chance to say enough is enough. Gould said the idea of athletes having a document to record details of drug tests in competition or random tests would go a long way towards stamping out cheats. The passport would need to be filled in with a required number of drug tests and stamped by an accredited doctor. Then it could be checked by officials as a requirement for entry to major events. But she said privacy and legal issues threatened to sabotage the passport plan, as they had in the past when athletes had challenged and successfully overturned sports bans and fines using their countries' civil laws.