Swimming: Even I would have taken drugs to win those 7 golds admits Swim Superman Mark Spitz; TWO LEGENDS ON THE ISSUE THAT STILL HAUNTS THE GAMES.

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Byline: Kevin GarsideOLYMPIC legend Mark Spitz has admitted he would have resorted to cheating if that was the only way to strike gold.Spitz, who won a record seven golds at the Munich Olympics in 1972, has put his squeaky-clean reputation on the line with his startling confession.The American hero has stunned the sporting world by saying he would have taken drugs if he couldn't beat swimming rivals by fair means.And he has inadvertently given the thumbs-up to the use of illegal substances just months after the Sydney Olympics was hit by drug allegations.Spitz justified his position by pointing out that he would have been doing only what everyone else was. Nevertheless it is not what you expect to hear from one of the greatest Olympians in history."All things being equal, if I had the confidence that I was going to win seven gold medals and realised that the outcome of having won them would catapault me into endorsement territory, then 100 per cent I would have experimented," said Spitz. "It was never an issue when I was around. Nobody even knew what drug to take, even if you wanted to."Spitz dropped a further bombshell when he claimed that current Olympic champions who passed drug tests in Australia were not neccessarily innocent of taking banned substances."Let's put it this way," he said. "A lot of the athletes who were drug-tested, and all the medal-winners were, proved to be drug-free for what they tested for. And I underline 'for what they tested for.'"They did not test for all the drugs that they could have. The International Olympic Committee made a big mistake in announcing the drugs they were going to test for because that left a drug buffet of everything else that you could take knowing that they wouldn't test for it."There were a lot of performance-enhancing drugs available that weren't on their testing list. When you looked at somebody who was a gold medal-winner the question was: 'Are they drug-free 100 per cent? You kind of wonder."Spitz, in London this week for Sky's World Sports Awards, tours the world on speaking engagements and has set up an internet business that is due to launch in three months.He rarely reflects on his own Olympic achievements, preferring to leave that to others."I had such a gratifying career that I don't look back on it like those athletes who lost a race but wish they hadn't and want to re-live it. I have total satisfaction in what I did."Such was the scale of his success, Spitz has every sympathy with today's swimmers struggling to leave their own mark in the pool. Even Australia's teenage wonder Ian Thorpe."I think he's a great swimmer," said Spitz. "But I would find it very difficult to be an up-and-coming swimming star when everything I'm trying to do is compared to the achievements of Mark Spitz."Having won seven gold medals, I'm used as a benchmark. Until somebody does that, does that mean that they're not great? Absolutely not. Does that mean that they're unaccomplished? Absolutely not."I've been displaced by at least three or four generations of athletes since I retired. Yet still everyone is compared to me."CAPTION(S):OLYMPIC ICONS: Mark Spitz, 50, in London this week with Dutch swimmer Pieter van den Hoogenband