Special report: the Sydney Olympics

Guardian

They shouted "Merlene out, out!" and threatened to boycott the men's and women's 4x100 metres relays - in which the women have a real medal chance - if Ottey is allowed to run the individual 100m at the expense of Peta-Gaye Dowdie.

The demonstration came on the same day that Germany's 1992 Olympic 5,000m champion Dieter Baumann was banned by the International Amateur Athletic Federation for two years after testing positive for the anabolic steroid nandrolone, the same drug found in Ottey's drug test last year.

But the objection of the Jamaican team is not that Ottey failed the drugs test in Lucerne in July 1999 yet escaped a two-year ban because of what IAAF chiefs described as "a mistake" at an arbitration hearing in July. It is that injustice has been heaped on injustice because the up-and-coming national champion Dowdie has been heaved aside to make way for the 40-year-old veteran of five Olympics.

"This is not about Merlene, this is about standards," said Patrick Jarrett, last year's Jamaican champion at 100m. "We all think that Peta-Gaye is getting a raw deal.

"It could happen to any one of us. They are taking out the national champion so what is the point of having a national championships? This is our livelihood. We have to make a stand."

Another Jamaican team member, who preferred not to be named, said: "It's a real shame. It's Peta-Gaye's first Olympics. She's a talented, improving athlete but now her head has gone. She's been in tears."

Ottey, the most bemedalled female athlete in history with 34 from international championships, has never won Olympic gold. Her career stretches back to the 1980 Moscow Olympics when she won bronze in the 200m.

Yesterday her Slovenian coach Srdjan Djordjevic said: "It's not very pleasant for her staying in the Olympic village. She has survived other things before. She can survive this."

Whether Baumann can survive the stain on his career is another matter. The German is threatening a legal injunction after the IAAF found against him at an arbitration hearing here yesterday.

Baumann, who broke David Moorcroft's European 5,000m record, claimed after testing positive last October that an unnamed person had injected his toothpaste with nandrolone. He offered $100,000 (£70,000) to anyone who could provide evidence that his toothpaste was spiked.

An intensive police investigation in Germany concluded that there was no evidence that this had happened, but the German federation still cleared him in controversial circumstances and he came here intending to compete if he was cleared.

Instead he now joins the British athletes Linford Christie, the 1992 Olympic 100m champion, Dougie Walker, the European 200m gold medallist, and Gary Cadogan, Britain's former No1 400m hurdler, in being branded drugs cheats by the IAAF after failing to persuade arbitration hearings that they were innocent of taking nandrolone.

The Baumann case is clearly an exception, but many critics, including the Princess Royal, have argued that the test for nandrolone is flawed.