Armenian lifter in drug bust
Adrian Warner
Armenian weightlifter Ashot Danielyan was stripped of his medal for cheating with drugs on Sunday when Olympic leaders announced two new positive tests for steroids at the Sydney Games.
Danielyan, the fourth weightlifter to lose a medal over doping at the Games, forfeited his bronze in the super heavyweight division after testing positive for stanozolol.
This is the same steroid found in the urine of Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson after he won the men's 100 metres at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
Norwegian wrestler Fritz Aanes, who came fourth in the 85 kg Greco-Roman wrestling, tested positive in competition for the steroid nandrolone, IOC medical commission official Patrick Schamasch said. He has been disqualified.
The number of positive cases in competition tests at the Games stood at seven on Sunday, the day of the closing ceremony. But there were still samples to be analysed from the last few days of the Sydney Olympics.
Two other track and field competitors failed the first set of out-of-competition tests carried out by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) during an Olympic Games, IOC medical commission chief Alexandre de Merode said.
Belarus hammer thrower Vadim Devyatovsky was sent home earlier in the Games after testing positive for nandrolone at the Olympic village.
The IOC confirmed on Sunday that Russia's European 400 metres indoor champion Svetlana Pospelova had tested positive for stanozolol during an out-of-competition test during the Games.
The Russian, who failed to get past the first round of the women's 400 metre heats, has already left Sydney.
Her result, however, cannot be cancelled because the test took place after the run. The IOC said the case had been handed over to the world governing body, the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF).
Under Olympic rules fourth-placed Russian lifter Andrei Chemerkin will receive the bronze medal in the men's super heavyweight division -- over 105 kg -- after it was stripped from Danielyan.
The Armenian was the fifth competitor to lose a medal for a positive test in Sydney after Bulgarian weightlifters Ivan Ivanov, Izabela Dragneva and Sevdalin Minchev and 17-year-old Romanian gymnast Andreea Raducan.
Latvian rower Andris Reinholds also failed a test but, like Aanes, did not win a medal.
Several other athletes were banned from the Olympics for failing out-of-competition tests in the run-up to the Games.
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