Britain's only ski medal winner Alain Baxter received 'Royal approval' when the slalom Olympic bronze medal winner met The Queen in Edinburgh last week for tea.

Baxter is currently appealing after his medal was withdrawn by the IOC for failing a drugs test. Baxter insists the drugs trace resulted from using an identical US version of a Vicks nasal inhaler which contained the banned substance methamphetamine, unlike the UK version of the product he regularly used for sinus problems.

In a separate development the Associated press have reported that the World Anti-Doping Agency in Malaysia are putting together a list of products that exist in regular medication and are not performance enhancing but which have variants that are performance enhancing and thus appear on the IOC's banned substances list. This is exactly the kind of differentiation which would allow Baxter and other athletes in a similar position to clear their names.

The AP reports that the new world anti-doping code could be in force before the 2004 Summer Games in Athens.

The new code would take substances like marijuana off the 'doping and thus athlete banning' list and on to a new list of 'Good Conduct' which might still mean penalties, but probably not as severe as for genuine 'drugs cheats'.

Apart from Baxter other recent victims of the existing regulations who are generally perceived to have receive unfair treatment include Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati who was stripped of a gold medal after testing positive for marijuana in Nagano in 98, although in his case he was reinstated due to a rules technicality.

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