Australia's Thorpe to sue over doping allegations

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australian Olympic swimming champion Ian Thorpe is suing a French newspaper over reports he used performance enhancing drugs during his five-time gold medal-winning career, his lawyer said on Monday.

A story written by Damien Ressiot and published by the French daily sports newspaper L'Equipe in March 2007 said Thorpe gave a May 2006 urine sample showing "abnormal levels" of testosterone and a second banned leutenising hormone.

Both testosterone and leutenising hormone are on the sporting banned substance list, but are naturally produced by the body.

Thorpe's lawyer Tony O'Reilly said his client, who is attending the Beijing Games as a spectator, wanted to repair damage to his reputation resulting from the report, according to Australian Associated Press.

The defamation case was listed in the Supreme Court of New South Wales state in Sydney on Monday for a Sept. 22 meeting between lawyers on both sides to discuss the case.

Thorpe, 25, Australia's most successful Olympian and 11-time world champion before retiring in Nov. 2006, was cleared of doping by the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, as well as by world swimming's governing body FINA.

FINA had intended taking the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport but dropped the plan due to lack of evidence.

Thorpe, regarded as one of the greatest swimmers of all time and a vocal anti-drug campaigner, said his reputation had been permanently tarnished.

"It's gut-wrenching, it really is. It's probably at the other end of the spectrum of winning an Olympic gold," he said after the allegations.

"What it does is put a question mark over that achievement and over all the achievements throughout my career," he said.