Swimming has been placed in a 'high risk' category for doping under Australia's Pure Performance Program, which has been launched by Federal Sport Minister Kate Ellis and will see up to 1,000 athletes provide blood and urine samples tested before heading to Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games.

Every athlete will be called on at least once, while those in a 'high-rsk' sport and/or medal hopes will face multiple examination. Samples can be stored in deep freeze for up to eight years by the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, which also has a right to revisit samples.

Swimming was joined by track and field, cycling, baseball, weightlifting, rowing and triathlon in the 'high-risk' group. Not everyone was pleased, Grant Hackett, Olympic champion and world record holder in the 1,500m freestyle, telling Jim Wilson at Australia's Daily Telegraph: 'I am surprised as our sport has an outstanding record in being clean and I would have thought there were bigger fish to fry. The fact we have such a clean record and are tested on a regular basis should count for something. Last year alone I was tested 15 times and it happened anywhere at anytime. I think that would be hard to beat in elite sport.'

Hackett was happy to submit to extra testing but unhappy for his sport to be labelled 'high risk'.

It is, however, a consequence of a global image of the sport after the doping soaked days of the GDR in the 1970s and 1980s and China in the 1990s - and all of those standards set back then are being knocked into a cocked hat by the current generation of athletes, in some cases by vast margins. The need for reliable and constant testing of a targeted kind is pressing, as much to protect the innocent as catch the cheat.

Hackett told the paper that he was 'extremely confident' that Australian swimmers would maintain their clean record before and during the Games in Beijing. His view was backed by Glenn Tasker, Swimming Australia chief executive.

ASADA chairman Richard Ings defended the agency's decision to call swimming 'high-risk': 'Swimming internationally has had its share of doping issues and the Australian Olympic swimming team is one of the most important components of the Olympic team.' Ings is right, of course. The intention is not to suggest that Australian swimming is suspicious, rather to recognise that the sport of swimming has had its fair share of doping problems and that, as standards improve with unrelenting ferocity, as they have of late, it is right to provide an environment in which no stone is left unturned in the fight to turf out cheats.

The pity is that the same stand is not being taken in all parts of the world. The testing process is far from being a level playing field as things stand.