Yes, Dennis Mitchell probably has an ax to grind when it comes to drug testing in sports.

Mitchell, a three-time Olympic medalist in track, was the focus of reports that he’d tested positive for testosterone and epitestosterone in 1998. A three-person USA Track & Field Doping panel cleared him of the charges, but the IAAF later banned him for two years.

But Mitchell, now 39 and retired from track, thinks athletes across sports are taking too much of the blame for the pervasiveness of performance-enhancing drugs. The only way to change the drug culture in sports is to recognize who else is responsible.

“Everyone needs to be held accountable. You need to clean the slate, from the top, not just the athletes,” he said “Don’t just scrub us all clean and get all of the dirty athletes out of there, whether they made a mistake or whether they didn’t.”

“I’m not advocating drugs, but if the system is going to change, it needs to change for everybody, not just the athletes.”

Mitchell believes athletes are getting a bum rap in the blame department and are getting mixed messages from the powers that be in sports. He scoffs at the notion that the commissioners of baseball and football were ignorant about the invasion of steroids into their sports in the 1980s and 90s, and he blames track and field and Olympic governing bodies for allowing athletes access to those dealing performance enhancing drugs.

For example, Mitchell said, it wasn’t uncommon to see Victor Conte rubbing elbows with athletes. Conte, the founder of BALCO who has been linked to athletes such as Barry Bonds and Marion Jones, is at the center of the federal grand jury investigation that has brought the steroid scandal to national attention.

“I’ve been to national championships and world championships and this man has been in our midst for years. He’s been in our warm-up areas,” he said. “Our administration has allowed for this man. They badged him, they gave him VIP status, to come into our warm-up areas and talk to our athletes. You can’t tell me that for all of these years they didn’t know what this man was doing. They allowed for this man to be a part of our sport.

“It’s the same thing in baseball,” he added. “You can’t tell me that the administration can’t look at a baseball game and tell the difference between a drug-using athlete and a non-drug using athlete.

“If the administration turns a blind eye to what’s going on, yeah, athletes are going to take advantage. Some athletes aren’t going to be morally or ethically correct,” he added.

Mitchell said he watched last week’s hearings on steroids and was amused that members of Congress regard the Olympic drug testing program as the “gold standard.”

“It’s only because the Olympic standard blankets everything,” he said.

He believes the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has a scorched earth policy when it comes to drug testing – ban everything you can so you don’t miss anything that might even be mistaken for a performance enhancer.

“If you’ve got a cold and you take cold medicine at a track meet, you’re banned for three years,” he said. “And there’s no scientific proof to say that two ephedrine tablets will cause you to run a world record.

“It’s a horrible way (for an athlete) to live,” he added. “Yes, you have people that are abusers, but those abusers can be stopped. Just like the government says (with illicit narcotics), don’t go to the junkies, go to the dealers. Get the dealers off the streets and the junkies have nowhere to go.

“The people who are supplying these drugs to the athletes are given full access to them, and there’s no one to police that. Once that becomes policed, you don’t have to put everything in the CVS store on the banned list. And you don’t have to ban Snickers bars. I mean, pretty soon, you’re not going to have anything left but sugar.”

The outcry since the Congressional hearings has focused on the players. Mark McGwire is now Public Enemy No. 1, and Barry Bonds is being ridiculed for his “woe is me” press conference last week. Over the past couple of weeks, Major League Baseball began testing players for steroids, and it’s only a matter of time before those who tested positive face public scorn and suspensions.

The hand-wringers out there think this might be enough to take care of the problem. Bud Selig and Donald Fehr, the overlords of baseball under whose watch steroid use flourished, will keep their jobs and the average baseball fan won’t care as long as they get their pound of flesh.

Meanwhile, more players will come into the fold, get access to steroids and use them, regardless of the penalties, because, to a lot of them, the difference between hitting 20 home runs and making $4 million a year and hitting 30 home runs and making $8 million a year is worth the risk.

“If heads start to roll at the head office, then heads are going to roll with the athletes,” Mitchell said. “If you keep just turning athletes over, new ones are going to come in and the problem’s never going to be addressed because it’s not being addressed at the administrative level.”

Dennis Mitchell may have an ax to grind, but his ax can cut pretty deep, too.