Olympic Shorts

Hungarian loses discus goldHungarian Olympic discus champion Robert Fazekas will lose his gold medal and be expelled from the Games after being caught trying to tamper with a urine sample, an International Olympic Committee source said yesterday.

The source also said Belarussian high jumper Aleksey Lesnichiy, who was last in the qualifying round, had tested positive for the anabolic agent clenbuterol.

Fazekas was spotted by officials trying to tamper with his sample after Monday's final. Lithuanian Virgilijus Alekna will now be awarded the gold, Zoltan Kovago (Hungary) silver and Aleksander Tammert (Estonia) the bronze.

Fazekas is the second athletics gold medallist to forfeit his title at the Athens Games after a positive test. Irina Korzhanenko of Russia was stripped of her Olympic shot-putt gold on Sunday after testing positive for a steroid.

Irish pair continue to struggle

Winds shifting up to 40 degrees are causing big problems for the whole of the star-studded men's keelboat fleet in Agios Kosmos but none of the crews face as big an uphill battle at the halfway stage as Ireland's Mark Mansfield and Killian Collins, who stay at the bottom of the scoreboard after scoring another 15th yesterday.

The Royal Cork Yacht Club pair continue to struggle in the light Aegean winds but even yesterday when winds reached 17 knots, the duo, who are world-ranked fifth overall, were still backmarkers after a good start yesterday, leaving them in 17th place overall. Star class racing continues until Saturday.

In the day's racing for the 49er fleet Howth's Tom Fitzpatrick and Fraser Brown scored their third top-10 result of the 16-race series but it has not been sufficient to move them any further up the overall scoreboard than 16 out of 19. The final short, sharp race of the series will be held on Thursday.

Greek Judo star dies

Greek judo star Eleni Ioannou has died in an Athens hospital following her plunge from a third-floor apartment in the city.

She was admitted to the Red Cross hospital in the early hours of August 7th, with serious head injuries, and died yesterday.

Her death is reported to have come as a result of Ioannou throwing herself from her balcony after a row with boyfriend Giorgos Chrisostomides.

Two days later he jumped from the same spot and has since been in intensive care at another hospital in the capital. The 20-year-old had been on the critical list for the past 17 days, and Chrisostomides remains in a similar state at the Evangelismos hospital.

Judges in the firing line

Russia lodged a forceful protest with International Olympic Committee (IOC) chief Jacques Rogge yesterday over what they called biased judging throughout the gymnastics competition.

After a "people power" display where spectators held up Monday's final horizontal bars event in protest at low marks for Russia's Alexei Nemov, Russian Olympic Committee President Leonid Tyagachev wrote to Rogge urging him to raise the issue of "subjective judging" with the IOC executive committee.

"The example of subjective judging of our gymnasts is so obvious that we no longer have the right to silence," ROC legal chief Tatyana Brilliantova said. Having looked at the possibility of an appeal against the results, however, she said the ROC had concluded that there was no legal avenue open to them other than to write in complaint.

Saying the gymnastics judges "understood that they had gone too far in their own subjectivity" when they amended Nemov's marks in response to the crowd, Tyagachev wrote to Rogge: "We are acting in defence of the interests not only of and indeed not so much of Russian athletes, as much as in the interests of all members of the international Olympic movement."

Complaints about judging in gymnastics, where "Sexy Alexei" Nemov failed to add a 13th Olympic medal to his tally and Svetlana Khorkina was pipped to the all-round gold by American Carly Patterson, come on top of a poor medal showing for Russia.