Former Australian Olympian John Konrads said on Sunday Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has done the right thing by attending the Beijing Olympics.

Konrads, the 1,500m freestyle champion at the 1960 Rome games, said boycotts did not work in the Olympic environment.

"In 1980, when the boycotts were all on for the Moscow Olympics, I was in favor of that," Konrads told Network Ten. "And with hindsight, a lot of hindsight, the only people who suffer are the athletes."

The Olympics had always had a chequered history in terms of political upheaval, he said.

Although some activists had urged world leaders to boycott the games, Rudd, U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin attended Friday's opening ceremony of Beijing Olympics and some of the early events.

Konrads urged Olympic chiefs to maintain the fight against illegal doping, saying the battle against drugs had to keep on going.

"Nobody's going to watch a bunch of junkies running around a track, and television audiences would collapse," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency August 10, 2008)