Nic Macrozonaris was an eight-year-old kid when Canadian Ben Johnson tested positive in Seoul, too young to grasp the Olympic story that rocked a nation.

Now that he is an Olympian himself, the sprinter from Laval, Que., doesn't get the fact that athletes still use drugs.

"I didn't understand," Macrozonaris said of the scandal of the 1988 Seoul Games. "I heard he took drugs ... all I knew was that Ben Johnson got in trouble."

Now that he has been subject of rigid drug testing himself, Macrozonaris hopes today's guilty athletes will be nailed.

"There are always going to be cheaters but, in the long run, the winners are going to be the ones who stay clean," Macrozonaris said. "I cannot imagine how tough it would be to always be on the run, always on the lookout."

Last week, Macrozonaris was one of the first Canadians to be subjected to a blood test. These Games are the first where athletes will be tested for both urine and blood, which is considered a huge threat to cheaters.

"I felt like a guinea pig," Macrozonaris said.

SCANDAL

Macrozonaris' agent and another former Canadian Olympian, Bruny Surin, isn't convinced the BALCO scandal in the U.S. and the efforts of the World Anti-Doping Agency suddenly will make the sporting world a cleaner place.

"Even with this scandal, people are still going to try to take that stuff," Surin said. "I was so frustrated because athletes were coming from nowhere and running faster.

"It got to the point of, whatever, if they want to do it and have a heart attack at 40 years old, then no problem."

As for Macrozonaris, Surin believes he has the ability to be the first white man to run the 100 faster than 10 seconds.

"I raced him a couple of years back and I beat him only by one-tenth of a second and he was running technically very weak," Surin said yesterday. "I just told him, 'If you do your proper training and believe in yourself, you can do it.'

"The only thing missing now is that in the last 30 metres he has to relax. Right now he tightens up all the time."