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IOC finds six more doping cases in Olympic Games

2009-04-29 16:37 Xinhuanet

BEIJING, April 29 (Xinhua) -- Eight months after the Beijing Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said on Tuesday that six more athletes failed the retests of their blood samples for CERA, a new version of the blood-boosting hormone EPO.

The six were three track and field athletes, two cyclists and one weightlifter, sources said. Among them were two medal winners, one in track and field and the other in cycling.

The IOC did not identify the athletes, saying it was notifying the competitors through their national Olympic committees.

Italian news agency ANSA said cyclist Davide Rebellin, silver medalist in the road race, was one of them.

The IOC reanalyzed a total of 948 samples from Beijing after new lab tests for CERA and insulin became available following the Olympics. The testing began in January and focused mainly on endurance events in cycling, rowing, swimming and athletics.

Athletes found guilty of doping face being disqualified from the Olympics and stripped of any medals they won, however they will be allowed to ask for a testing of their backup "B" samples.

The IOC previously disqualified nine athletes for doping at the Aug. 8-24 Beijing Olympics. In addition, there were six doping cases involving horses in the equestrian competition.

Four athletes have already been stripped of medals, namely Ukrainian heptathlete Lyudmila Blonska (silver), Belarusian hammerthrowers Vadim Devyatovskiy (silver) and Ivan Tsikhan (bronze) and DPR Korean shooter Kim Jong Su (silver and bronze).

The IOC is storing doping samples for eight years so they can be tested retroactively when new detection methods are developed.

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