Johnson will be stripped of his 100m world record

England have

Sprinter Ben Johnson has been sent home from the Seoul Olympic Games in disgrace.

The Canadian has also been stripped of his 100m gold medal after testing positive for drugs.

Johnson has just arrived home in Toronto and has said he will appeal against the International Olympics Committee's verdict.

But the IOC has already said the athlete's intended defence - that a herbal drink he consumed before the race had been spiked - will not be accepted.

Samples of Johnson's urine were tested for drugs immediately after the 100m final three days ago which he won in a world record time of 9.79 seconds.

And Olympic officials confirmed last night that traces of the anabolic steroid, Stanozol, had been detected.

The sprinter was woken in the early hours of the morning to be told the IOC had decided to send him home.

Canada's Prime Minister Brian Mulroney said it was the correct decision, but a tragedy for Johnson and a great sadness for all Canadians.

But the athlete's sister, Clare Rodney, told reporters she was convinced the drug testers had made a mistake.

"I can really tell anybody from the depths of my heart that he is not guilty," she said.

The Canadian media has labelled Johnson a cheat, but there was also sympathy for the man who said he valued a gold medal over a world record because no one could take it away from him.

Britain's Linford Christie - who was awarded the silver medal after Johnson's disqualification - said he felt sorry for someone who had been a "great ambassador" for the sport.

"I'm also sad for athletics because this has been a bad day for us," he said.

The musical Hair opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London

The American hippy musical "Hair" has opened in London - one day after the abolition of theatre censorship.

Until yesterday, some of the scenes in the musical, written by out-of-work actors Gerome Ragni and James Rado, would have been considered too outrageous to be shown on a stage in Britain.

The show, billed as an American tribal love-rock musical, first opened in New York on 2 December last year.

Many were angered by scenes containing nudity and drug-taking as well as a strong anti-war message at the height of the Vietnam conflict and the desecration of the American flag on stage.

The show's transfer to London's West End would not have been possible before the new Theatres Act which ended the Lord Chamberlain's powers of censorship dating back to 1737.

Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole introduced play censorship to silence shows like The Beggars' Opera which contained biting anti-government satire.

The new Theatres Act does not give playwrights a completely free hand. Strong language and obscenity will still be liable for criminal prosecution.

Hair does contain some blasphemous and sexually explicit language.

But the scene that has aroused most controversy in the musical so far is where the cast appears on stage in the nude, emerging from beneath a vast sheet.

The director of the London production of Hair, Tom O'Horgan, said: "I think that the famed nude scene has been greatly over-emphasised.

"It has very little importance in the show itself and much of the publicity has obscured the important aspects of the play, which are also perhaps shocking to people because they deal with things as they are. We tell it the way it is."

Asked whether the timing of the opening was significant, he said: "We couldn't have done the play the way we're doing it prior to this time without drastic modifications."

The cast of the West End production appeared on Eamonn Andrews Independent Television show last night but decided against performing the nude scene. Mr O'Horgan said it would have given the wrong impression of the show.

Hair had a shaky start in New York. Its first two runs were cut short before producer Michael Butler became involved. He brought in Tom O'Horgan as director.

abolition: the ending of a law, a system or an institution（废除；废止）

re-vamp: to make changes to the form of something （修改）