The US Olympic Committee is contesting an international ruling which could cost Michael Johnson and the rest of the US 1,600-metre relay team their gold medals from the Sydney Olympics.

The USOC has filed an appeal to sports' highest court challenging a recommendation by track and field's world governing body to disqualify the entire squad for a doping scandal involving team member Jerome Young.

The petition was lodged with the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland, by the USOC and five team members - Johnson, twins Alvin and Calvin Harrison, Antonio Pettigrew and Jerome Taylor.

Young is not covered by the appeal.

"They think only Jerome Young should be stripped of the gold medal and not the rest of the team," CAS general secretary Matthieu Reeb told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The appeal is directed against the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and the International Olympic Committee. A hearing date hasn't been set.

Young tested positive for the steroid nandrolone in 1999, but was exonerated by a US appeals panel in July 2000, avoiding a two-year ban.

He ran in the opening and semi-final rounds of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, but not in the final. Johnson ran the anchor leg in the final for the fifth and last Olympic gold medal of his career. All six members of the relay squad received gold medals.

USA Track & Field never gave the IAAF specifics about the Young case, citing confidentiality rules in place at the time. Young's name became public only last year.

The IAAF ruled in July that the entire team should lose the medals because Jones should have been ineligible to compete.

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