RUSSIAN RUNNER TESTS POSITIVE
Pospelova: positive test
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Russia’s European indoor 400 metres champion Svetlana Pospelova has became the first track-and-field athlete to test positive for a banned substance at these Olympics after failing an out-of-competition drug test for the steroid stanozolol.
However, the test cannot be regarded as a complete positive
case until all the details have been discussed and analysed,
athletics officials said.
The test was taken a few days after Pospelova failed to
reach the second round of the 400 metres eight days ago. The
20-year-old athlete has already left the Games.
"It is for stanozolol but the athlete has left,"
confirmed Alexandre de Merode, the International Olympic Committee medical commission chief.
Francois Carrard, IOC director-general, said the case would
be discussed at a meeting of the IOC’s executive board on
Sunday.
The IOC cannot expel the athlete from the Games since she
has already left. It is therefore likely that it will pass the
case on to the International Amateur Athletic Federation
(IAAF), the world governing body of track and field.
If the positive test is confirmed Pospelova faces a
compulsory two-year ban for a steroid offence under IAAF rules.
Stanozolol was the substance found in the urine of Canadian
sprinter Ben Johnson at the Seoul Olympics in 1988 when Johnson
was subsequently stripped of his men’s 100 metres gold medal.
Asked if he was surprised that athletes were still using
the old drug, de Merode said: "I’m not surprised. We can see
that, when athletes take something, they sometimes take old
well-known drugs."
Dick Pound, the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency
(WADA), expressed astonishment that an athlete would take
steroids.
"Why they think steroids can’t be tested for, I don’t
know," he said.
Pospelova made a big impression this year when she won the
European indoor title in Ghent in Belgium in February and the
European Cup 400 metres in July, only to disappoint in Sydney.
The case was discussed by the IOC’s medical commission in
the early hours of Saturday morning and was on the agenda of a
brief IOC executive board meeting around breakfast-time.
De Merode said one of the reasons the meeting about the
case had been put back until Sunday was that they had so far
received no explanation from the Russian.
Under IOC rules a competitor has the right to account for
any positive finding.
Pospelova, a member of the St Petersburg club, has improved
her best 400m time from 52.58sec to 50.42sec in the last
season.
But despite winning the European indoor and Cup titles, she
could only clock 53.34sec in her 400m heat on the first day of the
athletics programme.
Officials are conducting out out-of-competition tests for
the first time at the Sydney Games.
Before the athletics started, Belarus hammer thrower Vadim
Devyatovsky was sent home after testing positive for nandrolone
in an out-of-competition test in the Olympic village.
Five competitors, none of them from athletics, have tested
positive for banned drugs in competition tests carried out
during the Olympics although several athletes were banned from
the Games for failing out-of-competition tests before the
start.
Four of the five - Bulgarian weightlifters Ivan Ivanov,
Izabela Dragneva and Sevdalin Minchev and 17-year-old Romanian
gymnast Andreea Raducan - were stripped of medals. Latvian
rower Andris Reinholds failed a test but did not win a medal.
PETER WATTS
Sunday Times
