Growing suggestions by critics before the Athens Games that IOC president Jacques Rogge would falter in his attempt to carry out his promised war on doping in the Olympics have been proved wrong. The 62-year-old former surgeon did more than wage a war - he oversaw a massacre that will be felt for years by those athletes who remain convinced that cheating and drug taking is the way to gold.

While the 20-plus victims might have spilled tears instead of blood as they queued up to file out of the athletes' village in disgrace, their Olympic futures were dead and buried.

Greek sprint idols Kostadinos Kenteris, the Sydney 200-meter champion, and Ekaterini Thanou were told in no uncertain circumstances not to even think about trying to compete in the 2008 Olympics - the first time the International Olympic Committee had so publicly warned athletes to stay away from the Games.

The fallout will be felt not only in Beijing in four years' time but also in the federations who are responsible for policing sport. Rogge's uncompromising stance has allowed them to become tougher, knowing that the IOC and the Olympics have helped turn public opinion behind the hunters rather than the hunted.

"Today the general public know we mean business," said Rogge, who made the fight against doping one of his main aims when he took over the most powerful position in sport three years ago.

"It is more and more difficult to cheat in the Olympics. What counts is we act against this evil drug use. Every positive test catches a cheat and protects a clean athlete.

"We have got zero-tolerance to drug use," he added.

Rogge makes no secret of his contempt of those athletes who rise to the top by cheating.

"For me as a man and a lover of sport - I was an Olympic yachtsman - they are not worthy of the mantle of Olympic champion and cannot perform any exemplary function in such a role," he said in an interview two years ago.

It was clear those views have not altered, in fact they have probably hardened. Last year Rogge called for the creation of a network of informers to help in the battle against designer drugs after the bombshell discovery of THG and the revelations of the Balco affair that has rocked athletics.

"We need more intelligence from the field," he said.

Dick Pound, president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, agrees.

"I think there are a lot of people out there who are really fed up," he said. Rogge's determination was underlined in dramatic fashion when the IOC chased Hungarian hammer thrower Adrian Annus across Europe, six days after he had won the gold medal and proved negative after the mandatory doping test.

Annus had returned home, announced his retirement and said he was on holiday when he was told he would have to give another urine sample.

The reason was simple. The IOC's drug hunters feared that the Hungarian had been able to switch urine samples and what they had tested had not come from Annus.

If ever there was an Olympic case of being able to run but unable to hide, this was it.

And this 'catch the cheats at all cost,' has rung a bell with the sponsors - a key element if the IOC is to continue to reap the financial bonanza that comes their way from companies eager to cash in on the Olympic ideals.

"The sponsors are delighted with our stance on doping," said marketing commission head Gerhard Heiberg. "They know it is right and they share our aim."