The gold medalist in one of track and field’s glamor races and a silver winner in cycling are among six athletes from the Beijing Games nabbed for blood doping in the latest Olympic drug scandal.
National sports bodies in Bahrain and Italy confirmed on Wednesday that 1,500m champion Rashid Ramzi and road race medalist Davide Rebellin turned up positive for the new blood-boosting drug CERA in retests of their samples. Dominican women’s weightlifter Yudelquis Contreras and prominent German cyclist Stephan Schumacher were among the others.
A person with knowledge of the results said that Greek race walker Athanasia Tsoumeleka and Croatian 800m runner Vanja Perisic also tested positive.
PHOTO: AFP
If their backup “B” samples also come back positive, the athletes face being disqualified, stripped of medals and banned from the next Olympics.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced on Tuesday that a total of seven positive tests involving six athletes came back positive for CERA, which increases endurance by stimulating production of oxygen-rich red blood cells. The IOC has not named the athletes or the sports involved.
The six new cases bring to 15 the total number of athletes caught doping in Beijing.
The IOC reanalyzed a total of 948 samples from Beijing after new lab tests for CERA and insulin became available following the Olympics.
Ramzi won Bahrain’s first gold medal in track and field and is the first champion from the Beijing Games to be busted for use of performance-enhancing drugs.
If he is stripped of the Beijing victory, Asbel Kipruto Kiprop of Kenya stands to be upgraded from silver to gold. Nicolas Willis of New Zealand would go from bronze to silver, and fourth-place finisher Mehdi Baala of France could move up to the bronze medal.
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