LONDON -- Pressure mounted Thursday on USA Track & Field to explain why Jerome Young was cleared to run in the 2000 Olympics despite a positive drug test a year earlier.

Track's world governing body sent a letter to USATF officials asking them to turn over documents on the case, which could cost the United States its gold medal from the 1,600-meter relay in Sydney.

World Anti-Doping Agency chairman Dick Pound also stepped up his campaign against what he called a "flagrant abuse of doping policy."

The International Olympic Committee announced Tuesday it was opening disciplinary proceedings into the Young case. The move followed confirmation last week by U.S. Olympic officials that Young was the gold medalist who tested positive for steroids in 1999.

Under international rules, a confirmed positive test for steroids is punishable by a two-year ban. Such a sanction would have kept Young out of the Sydney Olympics.

Young, who won golds in the 400 meters and 1,600-meter relay at the World Championships in Paris in August, has said he never committed a doping offense.

The IAAF, which pressed the USATF for three years to divulge information on the case, made a new appeal Thursday in a letter from president Lamine Diack.

"We have explained the need for having this matter concluded in a proper way," said IAAF anti-doping chief Arne Ljungqvist. "We try to make them understand it is in their interest and our interest. We expect a quick reply and reaction."

Previously, the IAAF and USATF said they were bound by an arbitration ruling protecting anonymity in the case.

Pound, meanwhile, had a column in Thursday's Financial Times deriding the USATF decision to clear Young on grounds that he had passed drug tests both before and after the positive test for nandrolone. He said the refusal to disclose details of the case undermined international anti-doping rules.

"For one thing, it means that the other teams in the event may have been cheated out of the result that should have happened," Pound wrote. "For another, it suggests that there are rules for the rich and powerful countries in sport and another set for the small countries."

On another drug case, the IAAF said it was awaiting a lab report explaining the discrepancies in two samples of Kenyan middle-distance star Bernard Lagat.

Lagat, bronze medalist in the 1,500 meters in Sydney, tested positive for the endurance-boosting hormone EPO in Tubingen, Germany, on Aug. 8. The out-of-competition test was conducted by WADA. He was withdrawn from the Kenyan team for the World Championships.

The IAAF said Wednesday that Lagat had been cleared of any doping offense after another sample tested at a laboratory in Cologne, Germany came back negative.