Drugs steal headlines from sport

Barry Moody

The embarrassing stigma of drugs again dragged the spotlight away from sport at the Olympics Tuesday with a high profile US athlete and a petite Romanian gymnast at the centre of a new furore.

With the athletes taking a rest day there was little to distract from the doping controversy except a convincing victory by Cuban boxing great Felix Savon and the warm afterglow of Aborigine runner Cathy Freeman's 400 metres triumph on Monday.

The most damaging controversy surrounded world shot put champion C J Hunter, husband of sprint champion Marion Jones, whose quest for five gold medals has made her the most prominent athlete here after Freeman.

Hunter, a massive figure, broke down in tears at a news conference and pledged to clear his name after International Olympic Committee officials said he had tested positive four times this year for the anabolic steroid nandrolone.

''I don't know what happened, I don't know how it happened...I can promise that I will defend myself vigorously. We have put together a great team and I am quite positive that when all is said and done I will be exonerated,'' Hunter declared.

Earlier, gymnast Andreea Raducan, who will be 17 on Saturday, was stripped of her all-round gold medal after testing positive for pseudo-ephedrine contained in nurofen pills she took as a cold cure.

She was the fifth athlete to test positive for drugs in competition at the Games. The others were three Bulgarian weightlifters, all medallists, and a Latvian rower.

Raducan is being allowed to keep the team gold and silver collected earlier in the gymnastics competition.

The romanian team appealed to the court of arbitration for sport to reverse the ruling and it will conduct a hearing in Sydney on Wednesday. If it rules in her favour the gold will be returned to Raducan.

However, the Romanian team doctor, held to be responsible for giving Raducan the cold cure, has been expelled and suspended from the next Games in 2004.

Jacques Rogge, a member of the IOC medical commission, expressed some sympathy for Raducan but said they had had to act out of fairness to her rivals.

In the Olympic boxing tournament, Savon stayed on course for his third successive gold medal by abruptly ending the odyssey of redemption by American heavyweight world champion Michael Bennett, who served seven years in jail for armed robbery before returning to boxing.

The eagerly-awaited quarter-final was seen by many as the real final of the boxing tournament and the spectators included WBA professional heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield.

But Savon, who some had said was too old and too slow at 33 years of age, showed devastatingly who was best.

The fight was stopped inside three rounds, with Bennett considered outclassed under the ''mercy'' rule which can be applied when one boxer is 15 points ahead.

But none of the controversy or sporting action could take away from Australians a sense of euphoria over Freeman's victory, her face smiled forth from a sea of newspapers.

Freeman was universally hailed both as one of Australia's greatest athletic heroes and a graceful and potent ambassador for racial reconciliation, credited with bringing black and white Australians closer than ever before.

Newspaper editorialists waxed lyrical over how no Australian would forget the moment when she pounded round the track in the Olympic stadium to win the first athletics gold for her country since the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

Freeman's victory had much more than a sporting dimension because of her role as Australia's best known and best loved Aborigine personality.

''Right from the opening ceremonies, to what Cathy Freeman did last night before us all... Has sent a clear message of reconciliation right through,'' Evelyn Scott, chairman of the Council of Aboriginal Reconciliation, told Reuters.

''It's a positive sign that things can only get better.''

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