lodgebo
INReview Maven
offline
Registered: May 2003
Local time: 04:56 PM
Location: Scotland
Posts: 4383
|
| quote: |
U.S. stripped of 4x400 gold from '03 worlds
MONTE CARLO, Monaco (AP) - The United States was stripped of its 1,600-meter relay gold medal from the 2003 world championships on Sunday because of Calvin Harrison's second doping violation.
The gold instead goes to France, with Jamaica getting the silver and the Bahamas the bronze, the world governing body of track and field said.
Harrison was found guilty of using the stimulant modafinil at the U.S. championships in June 2003. He had contended that modafinil wasn't specifically mentioned on the official list of banned substances at the time.
Harrison had a chance to appeal the ruling, but the International Association of Athletics Federations said he is too late.
"The deadline has passed and that means there is a new result in the relay final," IAAF spokesman Nick Davies said Sunday.
Ten years earlier, Harrison tested positive for the stimulant pseudoephedrine during the 1993 U.S. junior indoor championships and served a three-month ban.
As a two-time offender, the 400-meter star was suspended for two years in early August this year and dropped from the American team for the Athens Olympics. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency also ordered him to forfeit his relay gold medal from last year's worlds in Paris, and all his results from the time of the test have been nullified.
Harrison ran the opening leg of the relay final. That means the other three runners - Tyree Washington, Derrick Brew and Jerome Young - will lose their gold medals, too. Instead, they will go to French runners Leslie Djhone, Naman Keita, Stephane Diagana and Marc Raquil.
Young has since been banned for life by the USADA for his second doping violation in a case that could result in the American 1,600 relay team from the 2000 Sydney Olympics - including Michael Johnson - losing its gold medals. The Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland, is yet to rule on that case. |
It will be intresting to see waht the CAS rules, though I believe they will back the IAAF.
It is a blow to lose medals but these people know the rules and if they take a banned substance then they need to be punised it is not steriod abuse, it is not doping it is cheating plain and simple and if you cheat you ahould ne keep your winners medals because that just sends out the wrong message.
I admit it is harsh on the honest members of the team but maybe this will serve as a warning to others that if you cheat then other people will suffer because of it. Maybe that will make them thinak abiut thier team mates.
|
12-12-2004 10:56 PM
