LONG jumper Mike Powell warned yesterday that he would “slap” anyone who tried to take his world record from him amid the fall-out from the ongoing athletics doping scandal.

The US athlete broke Bob Beamon’s 23-year-old mark when he leapt out to 8.95 metres at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo.

Powell has reacted angrily to a proposal by Ed Warner, chairman of UK Athletics, to scrap existing records and start again in a clean era for the sport.

Speaking on BBC 5 Live’s Sportsweek programme on Sunday, Powell said: “The long jump is one of those events where the record has lasted a long time.

“Jesse Owens had the record for 25 years; Bob Beamon had the record for 23 years; I have had the record for 24 years, so is somebody suggesting that something was wrong with Jesse Owens and Bob Beamon, so we have to change those records too?

“You can’t penalise somebody because you have a thought that somebody did something. To penalise one person — if I was the only one who was clean, it’s wrong to penalise me because of the faults of someone else.”