When Antonio Pettigrew admitted last month during the trial of former Trevor Graham trial that he had been doping during that time, it meant that, except for Johnson, everyone who ran on that relay, including twins Alvin and Calvin Harrison and Jerome Young, either has acknowledged taking or been banned for using drugs.

 

Coe, writing in his monthly column today in The Daily Telegraph, said he admired Johnson's decision to return one of the five Olympic gold medals he won during his career.

 

He wrote: "It comes as no surprise to me, nor anyone else who knows Michael Johnson, that he should have handed back his relay medal from Sydney after team-mate Antonio Pettigrew's admission that his role in the final was chemically enhanced.

 

"Maybe, just maybe, by his actions Johnson has started the fightback in America."

 

Coe, the vice-president of the International Association of Athletics Federations and a long-time anti-drugs crusder stretching back nearly 30 years, claimed last month that the problem of doping in the United States was always just as bad as it used to be in the former East Germany and Soviet Union.

 

He wrote in The Daily Telegraph: "Even with the unconscionable state-supported drug programmes in the old Soviet Union and large part of the Eastern Bloc, the real damage to my sport for too long has been inflicted by American track and field.

 

"It pains me to say this because I have many American friends in the sport who strive every day in high school, college and committee room to maintain clean competition, including, notably, my International Association of Athletics Federations colleague, Bob Hersh.

 

"But nonetheless, far too many have been willing to glory in the world's strongest track and field team and to turn a Nelsonian eye to fellow coaches who have inhabited a morality-free zone, and officials and athletes who have failed their sport."

 

Pettigrew has also agreed to return the Olympic relay gold medal he won after admitting to doping during the Sydney Games.

 

During the trial of Graham, Pettigrew came clean about using EPO and human growth hormone from 1997 to 2003.

 

He has also returned the gold medal he won as part of the US 4x400m team at the 1997 World Championships in Athens when they finished ahead of a British team including Roger Black, an ambassador for London's successful 2012 Olympic bid.

 

Pettigrew, now 40, also accepted a two-year ban from athletics.

 

Graham was found guilty of lying to federal investigators about his relationship to a steroids dealer.

 

To read Coe's full article visit http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2008/06/04/socoe104.xml.