Not a black athlete. But still a big fish got caught. Also Nick Willis was bumped to silver and Mehdi Bala was bumped to bronze. Here is the wire story..
* Sport
* Drugs in sport
1500m gold-medal winner Ramzi named after failing Beijing drug test
- Moroccan-born athlete among six to fail tests for Cera
- Cyclist Rebellin says 'I have nothing to hide'
* Digg it
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 April 2009 09.15 BST
* Article history
Rashid Ramzi, Bahrain 1500m runner
Bahrain's Rashid Ramzi celebrates as he wins the men's 1500m final at the Beijing Olympics. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images
The 1500m gold medallist at the Beijing Olympic Games, Rashid Ramzi, was named by the Bahrain Olympic Committee as having failed a drugs test, along with five other athletes. The committee said Ramzi's "A" sample was opened on 19 February and tested positive, adding that the runner's "B" sample will be tested in France on 8 June and that he will face an IOC hearing the same day.
"The Bahrain Olympic Committee apologises for receiving such news from the International Olympic Committee since it ensured Ramzi went through all the necessary doping tests before the games and they were all negative," the national committee said in a statement.
Ramzi, who used to compete for his native Morocco and still trains there, won Bahrain's first-ever track and field gold medal in Beijing last August. He also won the 800m and 1500m races at the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki.
The Moroccan-born runner won in Beijing with Kenya's Asbel Kiprop, the only runner who could stay with him, taking silver and New Zealand's Nicholas Willis winning bronze. Ramzi, who was 28 at the time, was born in Safi, home of 5,000m Olympic medallist Khalid Boulami and former 3,000m steeplechase world record holder Brahim Boulami. He moved to Bahrain in 2001.
He left his first big mark on the international scene in 2004 when he shaved nine seconds off his personal best and snapped the four-year winning streak of world record holder Hicham El Guerrouj.
The cycling road race silver medallist Davide Rebellin, meanwhile, has denied any wrongdoing after also being named. The International Olympic Committee said yesterday it had discovered seven positive results from re-testing samples taken at last year's Games, stemming from six athletes. The retests produced positive readings for Cera, the new generation of the banned blood-booster erythropoietin (EPO).
After speculation in the Italian media, the Italian Olympic Committee today announced that one of the six was Rebellin, but the cyclist has rejected all allegations against him. "I don't know what may have happened. It is certainly a mistake," said Rebellin. "It is impossible that I tested positive ... I have nothing to hide."
The 37-year-old Rebellin won silver in the Olympic road race in Beijing, and last week won the Walloon Arrow cycling classic in Belgium for the third time. A specialist at long single-day races, Rebellin won the Amstel Gold Race, Walloon Arrow and Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2004.
Another cyclist, the German Stefan Schumacher, has also tested positive. The German cycling federation said it had passed on the documents of a positive retest to Schumacher, adding: "He can now request the testing of the B sample."
Schumacher was suspended in March by the International Cycling Union (UCI) for two years from all cycling after failing a drugs test for Cera during the 2008 Tour de France. Schumacher, who won the 2008 Tour's two time trials and wore the overall leader's yellow jersey for two days, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
The cyclist claimed the ban had been imposed without any negotiations and without him being able to give his testimony. Schumacher was banned from competing in France for two years by the French Anti-Doping agency (AFLD) in February.
Another athlete to have tested positive for Cera is the Croatian 800m runner Vanja Perisic who finished sixth in her heat in Beijing, according to sources close to the investigation.
Meanwhile, Associated Press reported that it had been informed that the Greek race walker Athanasia Tsoumeleka was the fifth athlete and that the sixth was the Dominican women's weightlifter Yudelkis Contreras, who competed in the 53kg category in Beijing as Yudelkis Maridalin, finishing fifth.
Race walker Tsoumeleka, in fact, announced in January that she had tested positive in the new Beijing checks. Tsoumeleka, who finished ninth in Beijing in the 20k walk, was charged by a Greek prosecutor this month with using banned drugs.
The IOC re-analysed 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. "The further analysis of the Beijing samples that we conducted should send a clear message that cheats can never assume that they have avoided detection," said Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the IOC medical commission.
Coaches, athletes and anti-doping organisations welcomed the announcement, saying it helps restore credibility to Olympic sports. "I'm in favour of anything they're doing to clean up the sport," said Glen Mills, coach of the Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who won three gold medals in the 100 metres, 200m and 4x100m relay all in world-record times. Bolt "has not heard anything and he will not hear anything", he added.
The IOC will wait for word from the national Olympic bodies before holding any disciplinary hearings. Athletes found guilty of doping face being disqualified from the Olympics and stripped of any medals they won. The positive findings were based on "A'' sample test results. Athletes will be allowed to ask for a testing of their back-up "B'' samples.
In the meantime, national and international bodies are free to impose provisional suspensions of athletes, the IOC said. It previously disqualified nine athletes for doping at the Olympics. In addition, there were six doping cases involving horses in the equestrian competition, and four athletes have already have medals taken away: the Ukrainian heptathlete Lyudmila Blonska (silver), the Belarusian hammer throwers Vadim Devyatovskiy (silver) and Ivan Tsikhan (bronze) and the North 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. The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) welcomed the IOC findings. Under the Wada code, athletes can be disciplined up to eight years from the date of a doping violation. "We suggest that athletes who may be tempted to cheat keep this reality in mind," the Wada president, John Fahey, said. "We believe that retrospective testing serves as a strong deterrent."
Lauryn Williams, a member of the US track and field team in Beijing and a 2004 silver medallist in the 100m, also backed the testing system. "To go ahead and weed out the cheaters is a good thing," she said. "To find out there are additional cheaters is not a great thing."
The bodyfat argument is stupid because the elite athletes we aare talking about are probably all at like 5% to 6% bodyfat; black or white or Asian or whatever anyway. Whites are the strongest race, period. Speed is a different story, but we are equal or very close, and much quicker.
