Sochi dope test failures to be heard in October

LIMA, Peru: The first hearings of athletes who failed drug tests at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics following the retesting of samples, will take place in October, International Olympic Committee member Denis Oswald said in Lima on Friday.

In light of the initial results, the IOC’s disciplinary commission “will summon the athletes to appear in early October with decisions soon following”, said Oswald, president of the commission.

The commission will then have the power to disqualify the athletes and to withdraw the medals.

Following the reanalyses of samples carried out after the Beijing 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympics, 106 returned positive results and “99 athletes were disqualified”, said Oswald in a review presented at the closing session of the IOC in the Peruvian capital on Friday.

In total “75 medals were withdrawn in order to be reassigned”, he added.

The positive cases affected 16 countries with the worst offenders being Russia (37 cases), Belarus (16), Ukraine (11) and Kazakhstan (12).

The most sanctioned sports are weightlifting (49) ahead of athletics (46) and wrestling (eight).

Boxing, cycling and modern pentathlon account for one each.

The most frequently detected substances in the retests were turinabol (68) and stanozolol (31), anabolic steroids already widely used in the former East Germany.

Meanwhile, as the IOC wound down its week-long stay in Lima, where Paris and Los Angeles were named the respective hosts of the 2024 and 2028 Olympics, eight new members were elected to the organisation.

Sydney 2000 rowing gold medallist Jean-Christophe Rolland of France, now president of the International Rowing Federation, was amongst those elected.

Belgian Ingmar De Vos, Palau’s Baklai Temengil, Kristin Kloster Aasen of Norway, Thai Khunying Leeswadtrakul, Luis Mejia of the Dominican Republic, Chili’s Neven Ilic and Khalid Al Zubair of Oman were the other electees.

The IOC also renewed the mandates of 16 members including Kuwait’s influential Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah, an important figure in FIFA as well as the IOC, who was the subject of an American investigation into alleged corruption. Al-Sabah resigned from FIFA in May but has denied any wrongdoing.  —