Olympics: Willis in line for medal upgrade

Olympic 1500m bronze medallist Nick Willis may be upgraded to silver after the gold medal winner tested positive for drugs. Photo / Kenny Rodger

New Zealand athlete Nick Willis may be accorded the Olympics 1500m silver medal after Bahrain's gold medallist, Rashid Ramzi, tested positive for drugs.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said on Tuesday it had discovered seven more positive drugs results from re-testing samples taken from Beijing involving six athletes.

Ramzi is the first Beijing gold medallist caught positive for performance-enhancing drugs.

The Moroccan-born runner, who won the 800-1500 double at the 2005 world championships, gave Bahrain its first ever Olympic track and field gold medal with victory in Beijing in three minutes, 32.94 seconds.

Ramzi's "B" sample will be tested in France on June 8 and he will face an IOC hearing the same day, the Bahrain Olympic Committee said.

If he is stripped of the Beijing victory, Asbel Kipruto Kiprop of Kenya stands to be upgraded from silver to gold.

Willis would go from bronze to silver, and fourth-place finisher Mehdi Baala of France could move up to the bronze medal.

No New Zealand athletes at last year's Olympics have been netted in the re-testing of samples, the New Zealand Olympic Committee said yesterday.

Ramzi became a citizen of Bahrain after moving to the Gulf nation to take up a job in that country's armed forces in 2002, but retains a Moroccan passport and trains with old coach Khalid Boulami.

Ramzi and two cyclists are among six athletes to test positive for drugs at the Beijing Olympics, officials said on Wednesday.

Italy's road race silver medallist Davide Rebellin and German Stefan Schumacher, who is already banned for doping, were confirmed to have tested positive for CERA (Continuous Erythropoiesis Receptor Activator), in re-tests of samples taken in Beijing last year.

The Italian and Bahrain Olympic Committees confirmed the Rebellin and Ramzi positives while the German cycling federation said Schumacher had tested positive.

The Bahrain Olympic Committee said it would meet Ramzi, the country's first Olympic champion, to inform him of the findings and hear his explanation.

"While the Bahrain Olympic Committee expresses its regret at receiving this news from the International Olympic Committee it confirms that Rashid Ramzi had been subject to many tests before and during the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008 and all the results were negative," it said in a statement.

Ramzi's "B" sample will be tested in France on June 8 and he will face an IOC hearing the same day, the Bahrain Olympic Committee said.

CERA is the new generation of the banned blood-booster erythropoietin (EPO), for which a test was developed only recently.

A person with knowledge of the results told The Associated Press that Greek race walker Athanasia Tsoumeleka and Croatian 800-metre runner Vanja Perisic were the other track athletes who tested positive.

The Dominican Olympic Committee identified women's weightlifter Yudelquis Contreras as the sixth athlete. She competed in the 53-kilogram category as Yudelquis Maridalin and finished fifth.

If their backup "B" samples also come back positive, all six could be banned from the 2012 London Olympics if their international federations, responsible for any sanctions, ban them for any period longer than six months.

The new rule was introduced by the IOC prior to the Beijing Olympics as yet another deterrent to drugs cheats, as was the storing of samples for eight years to allow re-testing once new methods of detecting banned substances are developed.

The six new cases bring to 15 the total number of athletes caught doping in Beijing, and underscore the IOC's aggressive policy in catching drug cheats even outside the period of the Olympics.

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 track and field.

Tsoumeleka finished ninth in the 20-kilometre walk, and Perisic was eliminated in the first-round heats of the 800.

Tsoumeleka announced in January that she had tested positive in Beijing rechecks.

She was charged by a Greek prosecutor earlier this month with using banned drugs.

In Rome, the Italian Olympic Committee suspended Rebellin and anti-doping prosecutor Ettore Torri called him to a hearing on Monday.

The 37-year-old Rebellin finished second behind Spain's Samuel Sanchez in the Olympic road race. If he loses his medal, Switzerland's Fabian Cancellera could move to silver and Russia's Alexander Kolobnev to bronze.

Rebellin's pro cycling team, Diquigiovanni-Androni, temporarily suspended the rider, pending analysis of the "B" sample.

The German cycling federation announced that Schumacher, who finished 13th in the Beijing time trial and dropped out before the finish of the road race, was among the positive cases.

The 27-year-old Schumacher already has been banned for two years by the International Cycling Union after being caught by French authorities in retesting of Tour de France samples for CERA.

Schumacher won two individual time trial stages at the Tour de France last July and wore the yellow jersey for two days as race leader.

The IOC previously disqualified nine athletes for doping at the August 8-24 Olympics. In addition, there were six doping cases involving horses in the equestrian competition.

The IOC has already stripped four athletes of Beijing medals - Ukrainian heptathlete Lyudmila Blonska (silver), Belarusian hammer throwers Vadim Devyatovskiy (silver) and Ivan Tsikhan (bronze) and North Korean shooter Kim Jong Su (silver and bronze).

- NZPA