Australian racing authorities said yesterday they had taken steps to crack down on jockeys and apprentices using cannabis. The move came as Italian soccer authorities promised a range of measures to deal with drug use in the sport, and top cyclist Marco Pantani demanded more say for riders in drug controls in his sport.

Victoria Racing Club secretary Des Gleason said a programme would be put in place next month aimed at apprentices and track riders.

He admitted 194 apprentices, jockeys and stable lads had tested positive for drugs since 1990, 185 of them for cannabis.

The news followed Melbourne jockey Andrew Findlay's suspension from racing for six months on Monday after testing positive for cannabis and cocaine.

Victorian stewards made dawn visits to training centres to conduct random testing, with five positive results, during the past three months.

Western Australia recorded the first positive test for cannabis in 1990 and since then state racing authorities have conducted their own testing. Meanwhile in Italy, soccer officials and cyclist Pantani have both called for a crackdown on doping in that country's sport, amid reports that at least two soccer players have been using EPO (erythropoietin).

Turin judge Raffaele Guariniello would not comment on reports that either a doctor or a drugs company executive has recently told him about the use of a homeopathic medicine containing banned substances.

The medicine mixed with EPO, which increases the amount of oxygen in the blood, and growth hormone was reportedly tried out by two footballers who subsequently came back for more.

Guariniello is looking into the black market for drugs among professional and amateur sportsmen, and is now supported by an inquiry by the local Piedmont regional authorities.

Their inquiry opened after regional health chief Antonio D'Ambrosio discovered that spending on growth hormone in Piedmont alone totalled 18 billion lira (approximately £7 million) in 1997.

"And I don't think that we are a people of dwarves," he said.

The reports came as the national soccer federation announced a raft of measures to tighten up doping controls, as Italy tries to recover from having its dope-test procedures exposed as a shambles.

Italy will introduce blood and urine testing and the federation is setting up a new scientific commission to monitor them.

An awareness campaign, entitled "I'm not risking my health", will be aimed at footballers, warning them of the dangers of using banned drugs.

The problems in Italian soccer were the backdrop for some bitter comments from Pantani, who did the Tour de France/Tour of Italy double this year.

Addressing the Italian cyclists' union, he said: "There are sports which are much developed than ours in terms of the business interests and money involved, and where the controls haven't been made.

"Any yet, they have not been the object of suspicion and criticism like we have been. We don't want to be treated like the black sheep of sport, we want to be treated like all the others.

"And don't forget that it was the riders themselves who called for blood testing."

Pantani also called for riders to be given a bigger say in issues decided by the International Cycling Union.

An anti-doping code backed by all professional cyclists and their teams is to be studied by the union, it was revealed yesterday.