The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will discuss British demands to take medals away from East German drug cheats later this month. IOC director general Francois Carrard said yesterday the body would discuss the principle of appeals against race results at meetings in Japan before the Nagano Winter Olympics in early February.
There have been suggestions that the IOC may put a time limit on appeals and it is believed a three-year limit is being discussed.
Most observers believe there is little chance the IOC will attempt to re-write sporting history by withdrawing medals for performances achieved decades ago.
"We have been discussing the principle of how, when and why we should re-write history," Carrard said from the IOC's headquarters in Switzerland. "It is a delicate subject. The obvious trend is to go towards a limitation in time . . . "
East German coaches admitted several years ago that systematic doping played an important role in the state's remarkable success at Olympics in the 1970s and 1980s when sporting success was used to promote communism. Recent investigations by German public prosecutors into the abuse of banned performance-enhancing substances in the GDR has brought the subject back into the spotlight.
Earlier this week the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) said it was impossible under its rules to scrap athletics performances from the 1970s and 1980s even if athletes admitted to taking performance-enhancing drugs.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YVIRIOZQ35EWRPZXR27KGMO6YU.png)