Prince Alexandre De Merode Dead

Prince Alexandre de Merode, the head of the International Olympic Committee's medical commission and the man who dealt with the biggest doping scandal in history when Ben Johnson tested positive for steroids at the 1988 Seoul games, has died aged 68.

At the same Olympics the Belgian aristocrat was threatened with legal action by Linford Christie after he said the British sprinter had been "given the benefit of doubt" after he was cleared following a positive drugs test for pseudoephedrine.

Another Briton who faced De Merode's commission in Seoul was less fortunate. The judo player Kerrith Brown was stripped of his bronze medal after testing positive for anabolic steroids, despite protesting his innocence.

By then, De Merode was accustomed to becoming involved in doping controversies having been head of a commission set up in 1967 originally to deal with the then controversial issue of determining femininity.

He had risen to the top of sports administration via a variety of posts, including one in the Federation of Belgian Parachutists. He had no medical background, graduating in philosophy and law.

Nevertheless for more than 30 years De Merode led the IOC's attempts to play catch-up with the drug cheats as sport struggled to find reliable tests for the increasing number of banned muscle-building and stamina-boosting products.

His role declined following the creation in 1999 of the World Anti-Doping Agency, an independent body designed to lead the campaign against banned drugs and led by his IOC colleague Dick Pound.

De Merode held the office of IOC vice-president several times in the 80s and 90s. Some believed he enjoyed enough popularity within the Olympic movement to become a possible successor to the former president Juan Antonio Samaranch.

But De Merode lacked the ambition and political nous for the top job and preferred to work for Samaranch until the Spaniard retired last year.