The American pipped Dame Kelly to the title at the National Indoor Arena in March 2003 but later that year tested positive for the same designer anabolic steroid as Britain's Dwain Chambers and was banned for four years.

Now KOS Media, the publishers of Kent on Sunday, has started a campaign that they hope will force the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) to strip Jacobs of her title and instead award it to Dame Kelly, who is from Hildenborough, near Tonbridge.

They claim that the recent decision to award Britain's 4x400m team  the gold medals from the 1997 World Championships in Athens after finishing second to a United States team which included Antonio Pettigrew, who has since admitted using banned performance-enhancing drugs.

Dame Kelly bounced back from her defeat in Birmingham to win the 800m and 1500m double at the Olympics in Athens in 2004 but admits that her defeat to Jacobs still upsets her.

She said: “I think [the medal] should be taken away from that athlete if they have been done for drugs.

"If they have been caught in that year of competition, well they actually didn’t just get caught doing it right there and then did they?

"It was before that.

"[Regina Jacobs] was somebody that was banned that season and yet she wasn’t stripped of the gold medal she won in March of that year and I think that’s wrong.

"If you have been banned from sport give back the medal from that year.

"She got caught and banned and there’s a logic to say that, okay, she got caught in June it’s more than likely she was using it in March as well.

"So then give back the medals, not so much mine, but they should be given back as a general rule."

Jacobs' career was overshadowed by claims that she had used drugs but it was not until in July 2003 that she tested positive for Tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), the steroid distributed by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (Balco).

It followed a sensational build-up to the World Championships in Birmingham when she had set a world indoor record for the 1500m of 3min 59.98sec, which raised eyebrows as she was 39 at the time.

But, unlike Pettigrew, Jacobs has never admitted taking banned drugs, even after retiring and becoming a successful real estate agent in California.

Dame Kelly said: "For me, the worst thing was that it was in Birmingham and I would have loved to have stood there as World Indoor champion, but instead I was a silver medallist which is a great achievement, but not when you have done it against a druggie at the end of the day."

KOS Media has urged its readers to contact the IAAF to back their campaign.

Graham Pearson, the sports editor of Kent on Sunday, said: "We feel this is something that needs looking into and the record should be set straight. Dame Kelly has strong views against the use of drugs in sport and so do we.

"We urge our readers to get involved with our campaign."

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