Olympics: Wrestler may lose gold medal

LAUSANNE - Germany's Olympic wrestling champion, Alexander Leipold, faced losing his gold medal after failing a drug test at the Sydney Games, Olympic chiefs said yesterday.

And Mongolian freestyle wrestler Oyunbileg Purevbaata also failed a dope test at the Olympics, which ended on October 1.

Leipold won Germany's first freestyle wrestling gold for 40 years in the 76kg final, but subsequently tested positive for the banned steroid nandrolone.

"The medical commission of the IOC has recommended that the gold medal be stripped of recognition," the German National Olympics Committee said.

Leipold would be the first German Olympic champion to be stripped of his title for doping.

Purevbaatar, who tested positive for a diuretic, failed to win a medal at the Games, finishing fifth in the 58kg division. But his achievement will also be struck from the records if the IOC's executive board confirms the two results - revealed at a meeting of the medical commission yesterday - in coming weeks.

The two cases brought the total number of positive competition tests at the Games to nine.

Leipold, who attended the IOC medical commission hearing, denied taking any banned substances. His wife Juliana was in tears in the lobby of the IOC's headquarters in Lausanne after the hearing.

"I hope someone can understand the pain we have been through," she said. "It's been 14 hard days."

But IOC medical commission chief Alexandre de Merode said: "Nandrolone is an anabolic steroid. When it's found at 10 times the fixed limit, then the case is clear.

"We have heard from the German delegation and we have spoken to the athlete in a clear way. They accepted that the test was conducted properly.

"He will be asked to give back the gold medal [if the executive board confirms the decision]."

Leipold, world champion in 1994, said he had passed a drug test taken at the end of August and could not understand the positive test.

"Nandrolone is not something a wrestler would take," he said. "I don't wrestle for power. I wrestle with technique. I don't understand what has happened. I am hopeful [of keeping the medal] because I didn't take anything."

The German was competing in his fourth Olympics. His victory over American Brandon Slay in the under-76kg final was his first Olympic medal.

The two men brought the number of positive tests in Olympic wrestling in Sydney to three. Norwegian Fritz Aanes, who came fourth in the 85kg Greco-Roman wrestling, was disqualified after testing positive for nandrolone.

Leipold was the sixth medallist to fail a drug test at the Games.

Bulgarian weightlifters Ivan Ivanov, Izabela Dragneva and Sevdalin Minchev, Romanian gymnast Andreea Raducan, and Armenian weightlifter Ashot Danielyan were all stripped of their medals.

Latvian rower Andris Reinholds, who failed to make the single sculls final, was kicked out of the Olympics after nandrolone was found in his urine.

- REUTERS

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