SYDNEY -- It was easier to follow at the start.

Ma's Army of turtle's blood-addled athletes gave up their bid for Olympic selection and vanished from his remote training camp as Chinese drug testers headed their way.

Britain's 100-meter champion Linford Christie, now a coach, was banned from the Olympics after testing positive for nandrolone he said must have been in a food supplement.

Taiwan banned three weightlifters and a coach.

Then Uzbekistan's athletics coach Sergei Voynov was caught smuggling vials of human growth hormone through customs that he planned to use to put hair back on his shiny dome.

The scandals trickled, then streamed and the floodgates finally broke open Monday when Marion Jones' husband C.J. Hunter was exposed as having tested positive to nandrolone four times this year. He explained that he had eaten the same supplement as Christie. The big shot putter must have a big appetite. The level of nandrolone in his system was alleged to be 1,000 times the acceptable limit.

Australia was so drunk with euphoria over indigenous darling Cathy Freeman's victory in the women's 200 meters Monday night that it failed to recognize the advent of the newest sport in Sydney. No, not keirin cycling or taekwando, but keeping tally of the drug binge.

Romania's 17-year-old gymnast Andreea Raducan was soon stripped of her gold medal after testing positive for ephedrine her doctor said had been in a medicine he prescribed for a cold. It must have been a very bad cold, considering she had three times the acceptable level of the drug in her system -- easily enough to assist her performance. Then Olympic officials marched Romania's Mihaela Melinte off the field of Stadium Australia as she prepared to compete in the hammer throw, despite testing positive for nandrolone a month ago.

There are so many track marks puncturing the Sydney Olympics that it may well be remembered as the Drug Games.

Trouble is the scandals come so thick and fast, it is hard to keep up. You can easily find a medal count, nation by nation, but wouldn't it be a tremendous shot in the arm for the Olympics if there was a doping tally?

Well, The Japan Times is proud to announce that we are the first to introduce the concept.

Taking host city newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald's "Drug busts: Sydney 2000" list -- which can be found at www.olympics.smh.com.au/specials/druglist.html -- we bring you the latest national standings in the race for the crown of chemical-enhancement.

Romania 5, Bulgaria 4, Taiwan 3, Canada 2, Great Britain 2, Hungary 2, Egypt 2, Italy 2, U.S. 1, China 1, Latvia 1, Kazakstan 1, Norway 1, Czech Republic 1, Germany 1, Kenya 1, Iran 1, Morocco 1, Nigeria 1, Ukraine 1, Uzbekistan 1, Belarus 1.

While the U.S. is responsible for the biggest drug scandal of the Olympics thus far, it still languishes in equal last place on the table.

But there are still three days to go and they have a chance to leap to the front if IOC medical commission chairman Prince Alexandre de Merode is to be believed. He says 15 U.S. athletes at the Games are competing under a drug cloud. The 15 drug cases were detected at a laboratory in Indianapolis that failed to pass on the results to either the IAAF or the IOC for six months.

Bulgaria has a chance to leap to equal first place with Thursday's news that one of its Olympic canoers has allegedly tested positive for a banned diuretic.

The host nation has failed to even get on the board, despite the insistence of Australian athletes and officials that as many as 80 percent of its athletes are on the juice.

Of course, the drug tally is only as good as official testing procedures and, sad to say, they are so poor that this list can not be considered in any way representative of real national trends in drug abuse.

But if they can try a little faster to catch up to the athletes, Games sponsor IBM may one day be busier updating this list than the medal count.

And maybe then nations will do something about cleaning up drugs in sport.