Athletes should be allowed to take performance-enhancing drugs as long as the currently banned substances do not damage their health, International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch said yesterday.

Samaranch told Spanish newspaper El Mundo the list of banned drugs must be slashed and harmless substances should not be prohibited.

He was reacting to the recent scandal involving the Festina team in the Tour de France, which he described as "a tough blow for cycling and for all sports".

"But the ones to blame are not the athletes but those around them," he added. "Doping demands an exact definition - and I have been asking for it for years."

He denied that the IOC has considered legalising doping, but argued that "the actual list of banned products must be reduced drastically. Doping is everything that, firstly, is harmful to an athlete's health and, secondly, artificially augments his performance," he said.

"If it's just the second case, for me that's not doping. If it's the first case, it is," he added.

Eminent British athletics coach Frank Dick reacted strongly to Samaranch's statements. "This is disgraceful and flies in the face of everything we should be standing for. It is the equivalent of throwing the towel in. At a time when the cheats should be getting severely punished, I find it ridiculous that a man of such power and influence should be advocating that they get off scot free."