WITH only a matter of weeks before the Olympics begin, it is an exciting time for top athletes and an exciting time for sports fans. It should be a positive time for sport but instead, with a decision still pending on the Dwain Chambers situation, Team GB continues to be dogged by the negative.

It is a never a good time for the focus to be on drugs cheats – they undermine their sport, their team-mates and their country – but until the courts decide whether they are going to uphold the British Olympic Association (BOA) byelaw banning athletes who have been caught using drugs from competing for the nation in the world's most prestigious multi-sport event, the unfortunate fact is that Chambers will continue to occupy the minds and stories of the media, and therefore the thinking of the public.

The hope is he will not be allowed to travel to Beijing and that everyone can start to concentrate on the clean athletes who are aiming to do themselves and their country justice and hopefully bring back as many medals as possible.

For me, it was a simple decision to join over a hundred British competitors, past and present, in writing a letter of support for the BOA byelaw. It is not a personal attack on Dwain, it is about the principle and my own strongly-held belief that we need to have the toughest possible deterrents if we are ever going to eradicate the illegal use of drugs in our sports and give people who are considering cheating a reason to think twice.

The fact is, the majority of people who compete in Beijing will be clean. I believe that. Some people may think I am being naive and it may vary from sport to sport but I look about the cycle track and I look at my main rivals and I am sure in my own mind that they don't take drugs. But that doesn't stop the innuendo and that's because of the drugs cheats. They have tarnished the sport's reputation and that annoys me.

Drugs cheats don't just risk their own reputation, they try to deprive honest, dedicated athletes of the medals they deserve and they deprive youngsters of worthwhile role models. And what's the punishment? A year or two out the sport. In my opinion that is not enough, especially if the ban is served outwith Olympic years. It would be little or no deterrent if they could continue training, possibly even still taking drugs without having to be tested, before emerging back on to the scene when the ban has been served and walk, run, cycle or swim their way back into the GB team.

There are genuine mistakes, people who take the wrong cough medicine or cold remedy, and they can be viewed differently. But the people not only the BOA but the IOC should be coming down hard on are people, such as Dwain Chambers, who have either been found to be cheating the system for a concerted period of time or those who admit to taking a shopping list of banned substances.

In Chambers case, he admitted taking banned substances for a long period of time and his was a premeditated crime. He knew full well what he was doing. The problem is he wasn't the only one punished. Stripped of the 4x100m relay medal he "won" at the 2003 World Championships, so were his team-mates. That's the problem; a person's decision to cheat always impacts on others.

Despite the fact my event couldn't be any more different from the Tour de France, because we are all cyclists, some people tar is all with the same brush. I have never had anyone accuse me of taking drugs and I would be shocked if anyone ever did, but I am aware of the innuendo which affects cyclists who perform very well.

For me people who resort to banned substances are mentally weak and are losers regardless how many medals they then cheat their way to. If someone takes drugs it is because they don't believe they are good enough to win unaided or they want the easy option. Those of us who believe we are good enough to get to the top of our sports and have proved it, now want something done to ensure people don't thing drug-taking is the easy option. We have to be firm and hit them with a punishment which acts as a true deterrent.

The IOC should be banning drugs cheats for life. They should be leading the way but, in the meantime, I hope the BOA byelaw stands up to the courts' scrutiny. It's nothing personal against Dwain Chambers, I just don't want drugs cheat in the GB team, making a mockery of the Olympic ideals.