Tennis great Yannick Noah accused Spanish athletes of widespread doping in an interview published yesterday, adding the only way to level the playing field would be to allow everyone to use banned drugs.

The 1983 French Open champion told Le Monde newspaper that French athletes no longer had a chance against their Spanish opponents and said his homeland was wrong to impose such stringent testing on its athletes.

"How can a country (Spain) dominate sport from one day to the next?" he asked. "Had they discovered avant-garde training techniques and methods that no one else imagined?"

He said faced with Spanish athletes who were consistently beefier than French ones, the only conclusion was that they must be doping. He offered no other proof.

He said the buzz in sports circles was that the only way to win was to stay one step ahead of the capabilities of the anti-doping tests.

"If you don't have the magic potion, it's difficult to win," he said.

It seemed, he added, as if the Spanish had fallen into the vat, like Obelix, the sidekick of Asterix, the French cartoon heroes who accidentally stumble on a potion that helps them win the Olympics.

But Noah didn't advocate a crackdown on Spanish athletes; instead, he said France should be more lenient.

"We're not being treated in the same way as the majority of our adversaries from other countries," he said. "The best attitude to adopt is to accept doping. And then everyone will have the magic potion.