Raducan caught, Hunter in sights

Romania's Olympic all-around gymnastics champion Andreea Raducan has been stripped of her gold medal after failing a drugs test. The decision early this morning Irish time followed fast on the heels of the revelation that US track and field officials may have concealed up to 15 positive tests since spring last year, including one on CJ Hunter, the husband of Marion Jones.

International Olympics Committee member Thomas Bach said Raducan had been disqualified after testing positive for the banned stimulant pseudoephedrine.

He said she would keep her team gold medal and her silver medal from the vault competition.

The Romanian team doctor who gave the cold medication to the gymnast was banned from the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Games and the 2004 Athens Olympics.

"It was a very difficult case. I don't know of any case like this before," said IOC vice-president Kevan Gosper following an executive committee meeting early today.

Bach said the gymnastics team doctor was to blame for the loss of Raducan's gold medal.

"He has the real responsibility in this case," Bach said. "He prescribed the medication to this girl. It's a good signal to all the people surrounding the athletes that they can be punished."

Raducan, who turns 17 on Saturday, became the first Romanian to win all-around gold since Nadia Comaneci, who scored a perfect 10 on the way to gold in the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

She is the first gymnast ever to fail a drugs case in the Olympics and the second gold medallist of these Games to lose her medal after Bulgarian weightlifter Izabela Dragneva.

Pseudoephedrine is a banned stimulant contained in many common cold and flu remedies.

Raducan led Romania to the team title a week ago and led a clean-sweep of the medals in the all-around.

Compatriots Simona Amanar and Maria Olaru took silver and bronze but now move up while China's Xuan Liu, who placed fourth, takes the bronze.

Meanwhile it was alleged yesterday that Hunter and top US officials have known for weeks that the shot putter tested positive for steroids (nandrolone and testosterone, reports say) but key officers within USA Track and Field (USATF) tried to keep the news out of the media until after the Olympic Games. The International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) said yesterday that Hunter had tested positive for a banned drug in Oslo on July 28th.

"The IAAF confirms that shot putter CJ Hunter of the United states has tested positive for a banned substance within the IAAF control system," the sport's global governing body said.

Prince Alexandre de Merode, the International Olympic Committee medical director, said that Hunter's positive test had shown a concentration of nandrolone which is 1,000 times above the limit of two nanograms per millilitre of urine. The test took place at the Bislett Games in Oslo in July. Hunter, who won the world championship at Seville last year, promptly vowed to defend himself against the drug allegations. The events of yesterday seem likely to cause a significant rift in the Olympic movement. Johann Koss, a former winter Olympian and now an IOC member and athletes' representative, attacked US sports authorities and claimed that US athletes were being shielded in drugs cases.

He received support from de Merode, who claimed that the silence surrounding the Hunter case was unsurprising. "There were five cases taken by the Los Angeles laboratory in out-of-competition tests before the Seoul Games (in 1998) and the US didn't say anything about it and the five competed at the Seoul Games. The US didn't say anything then, there was complete silence, so nothing would astonish me now."

IOC director general Francois Carrard said the matter was not an issue for Olympic organisers. "The test was done elsewhere. There is no CJ Hunter case in Sydney," he said. Wishful thinking surely.

Hunter was among the favourites to win gold here but withdrew from the Games early in the month stating that he required surgery on a knee injury.

The head of the US track and field team, Craig Masback, said yesterday he knew of at least two more Americans who had failed drugs tests.

Masbank said the tests did not involve any athletes at the Sydney Olympics. He said the two athletes, whom he did not identify, had appealed on grounds that the positive readings were the result of taking medicines for head colds.