Olympians to be Disqualified?

September 19th, 2008 filed in Olympics

Just when you thought the Olympics were over for another two years, comes word that the the International Olympic Committee will examine several pending doping cases from the Beijing Games this weekend. As Chester predicted in our Olympic Cheating Recap, “Guaranteed within the next few years, more will be added to this list.” Apparently it won’t even take a month, as an IOC disciplinary commission will meet Sunday to consider sanctions against several athletes, including medal winners. While so far doping offenses have been down substantially from the Athens games, this development could help Beijing catch up. Steroid Nation has an interesting theory on the decline of positive tests, “The number of doping cases discovered prior to the Olympics, as we documented, clearly reduced the positive tests at the Games.  For instance American swimmer Jessica Hardy might have tested positive at the Beijing Games if she hadn’t been tested in the USA prior to heading to China.”

Monsters and Critics were the first to break this story yesterday, with the Associated Press filling in the details today. From the M&C article :

More alleged doping cases connected to the recent Beijing Games are pending, a Norwegian member of the International Olympic Committee said Thursday. Gerhard Heiberg’s remarks were made on the eve of a meeting of the Olympic movement’s ruling body in Lausanne, Switzerland this weekend. The cases concern ’several people from several nations’ and several different events, Heiberg told broadcaster NRK, adding he was ‘not surprised.’

The AP article specifically mentions two medalists from the hammer throw competition :

Vadim Devyatovskiy and Ivan Tsikhan tested positive for traces of testosterone after the hammer final Aug. 17. If the two are found guilty of doping, they would be disqualified and stripped of their medals. Devyatovskiy’s silver would go to Krisztian Pars of Hungary, while Tsikhan’s bronze would go to Koji Murofushi of Japan. Primoz Kozmus of Slovenia won the gold medal. The 31-year-old Devyatovskiy faces a lifetime ban if found guilty of a second doping offense. He served a two-year drug suspension from 2000-02. It would be a first offense for 32-year-old Tsikhan, a three-time world champion and silver medalist at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

However those two are not the only athletes that will be under discussion :

Emmanuelle Moreau, an IOC spokeswoman, said the panel would review “all pending cases from Beijing.” She said these included samples “that might have come back with adverse findings after the games were finished.” … The Olympics ended Aug. 24. It can take several days for samples to clear testing, so any positive tests from the second week of the games might only be confirmed afterward. Moreau said the panel was only meeting now, nearly a month after the end of the games, because of the logistics in getting the members together and allowing athletes to attend the hearing.

As you know, competitions in the second week of the Olympics include all Track and Field events, including Usain Bolt’s sprints. Might he be among the athletes under discussion on Sunday? I guess we’ll soon find out.