Close of Olympic Games for doping
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lausanne has stripped Rashid Ramzi from Bahrein of his gold medal. He won the men’s 1,500 metre race in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Italian Davide Rebellin, who placed second in the men’s road cycle event, will have to return his silver medal, the IOC announced. The world governing body for the Olympic Games sanctioned three other athletes who participated in the Beijing Olympics for using the banned hormone CERA, 18 November.
The IOC’s zero-tolerance policy in the use of endurance or performance-enhancing drugs means that it will store blood and urine samples taken during the Games for eight years so that the laboratories can do retroactive testing.
Three additional athletes were punished for using the same performance-enhancing drug: Stefan Schumacher from Germany won 13th place in the men’s cycling individual time trial event. Athanasia Tsoumeleka, of Greece, placed ninth in the women’s 20km walk, and Vanja Perisic, from Croatia, has been disqualified from the women’s 800m heats where she placed sixth.
A sixth athlete from Dominican Republic, who tested positive once, but not in the second sample, was not sanctioned.
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News story, GenevaLunch, 19 November 2009.
Filed under: Sports
Tags: Athanasia Tsoumeleka, Bahrein, Beijing, CERA, Croatia, Davide Rebellin, Dominican Republic, endurance-enhancing, Germany, Greece, IOC, Italy, Olympic Games, performance-enhancing, Rashid Ramzi, Stefan Schumacher, Vanja Perisic