AOC wants members to declare no past doping

• AOC president John Coates will propose that future members sign a declaration of no "doping history"
• Coates said if the athletes don't sign the declaration they will not be allowed to go to the games
• The move follows the resignation and firing of Australian cycling officials after they admitted to doping

SYDNEY (AP) — Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates will propose that future Australian Olympic team members sign a statutory declaration saying they have no "doping history."

"If they don't sign, they don't go to the games, they won't be selected. What I don't want is for the AOC to have egg on its face like cycling has," Coates said of his zero-tolerance approach.

He will put his proposal to the AOC executive board at a meeting later this month in Melbourne.

The move follows the resignation or firing of Australian cycling officials Matt White and Stephen Hodge. They admitted to doping earlier in their careers following the release of evidence in the Lance Armstrong doping case that saw the American rider lose his seven Tour de France titles.

If adopted it would affect athletes in contention for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Athletes, coaches and officials would all be required to sign the document.

"In my opinion we simply cannot allow the name of the AOC to be damaged, like that of the International Cycling Union, for not having taken every reasonable step possible to ensure that no person in authority on our Olympic team has a doping history," Coates said.

The statutory declaration would form part of the Team Agreement that athletes, coaches and officials must sign before they are selected by the AOC.

On Thursday, Australian professional road cycling team Orica-GreenEDGE fired team director White, two weeks after he also lost his part-time job with Cycling Australia for admitting to doping during his racing career.

White, who was formerly professional men's coordinator with Cycling Australia, was mentioned in the Armstrong report and he confessed to doping while riding for Armstrong's US Postal team.

On Oct. 19, Cycling Australia vice president Hodge quit after admitting to doping during his time as a professional rider.

"During a stage of my career as a professional cyclist I took performance enhancing drugs — a decision I am not proud of," Hodge said.

Hodge raced as a pro in Europe from 1987 to 1996 with several teams, was appointed to the Cycling Australia board in 1999 and became vice president in 2007.