The head of the Olympic athletes Commission, Frankie Fredericks, yesterday insisted on zero tolerance for doping cheats, brushing aside suggestions that an Olympic Games ban should be waived.

Britain’s top anti-doping official, Andy Parkinson, said last month that he felt an additional one games ban imposed by the IOC on suspended athletes discouraged attempts to identify suppliers.

But Fredericks, a four-times Olympic sprint silver medallist, told journalists he felt the athletes supported the ban, while he even favoured a tougher lifetime ban enforced by the British Olympic Association.

“Personally I’m in favour if it,” he said, pointing out that his predecessor on the Athletes Commission had been one of the driving forces behind the additional IOC sanction.

“I am in favour of zero tolerance to doping,” Fredericks said.

Under a rule adopted by the IOC in 2008, any athlete banned for six months or more on a doping offence in their own sport is sidelined from the next Olympic Games.