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Four prominent Belarusian track and field athletes caught for doping after reexamination of samples from 2005 world championships

 

The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) announced Friday that six prominent athletes, including four Belarusians and two Russians, had failed doping tests after samples taken at the 2005 world championships in Helsinki had been reexamined and found to contain banned substances.

Ivan Tsikhan, Andrey Mikhnevich, Vadzim Dzevyatowski and Nadzeya Astapchuk of Belarus and Tatyana Kotova and Olga Kuzenkova of Russia will now be subject to disciplinary procedures, the IAAF said.

Hammer throwers Tsikhan and Dzevyatowski won gold and silver, respectively, at the Helsinki championships and finished in the same order at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. They lost their Olympic medals after testing positive for the presence of exogenous testosterone, but they won appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Mr. Tsikhan did not compete at last year's London Olympics following a request from the IAAF.

Shot putter Mikhnevich, a 2003 world champion who won an Olympic bronze medal in Beijing, finished fifth at the Helsinki championships.

Shot putter Astapchuk, a gold medalist in Helsinki, won a gold medal at the London Olympics but was stripped of it after she tested positive for a banned anabolic steroid.

Long jumper Kotova was a bronze medalist at both the 2000 and 2004 Olympics and won three successive silver medals in the world championships, while hammer thrower Kuzenkova won a gold medal at the 2004 Olympics and the world championships in Helsinki.

"The IAAF's message to cheaters is increasingly clear that, with constant advancements being made in doping detection, there is no place to hide," IAAF President Lamine Diack said in a statement on Friday.

"This re-testing is just the latest example of the IAAF's firm resolve to expose cheating in our sport,” he said. The IAAF will continue to do everything in its power to ensure the credibility of competition and, where the rules have been broken, will systematically uncover the cheats."

The IAAF did not say what banned substances had been found in the reexamination. Anti-doping officials keep samples for a minimum of eight years because that is the statute of limitations for retroactively banning an athlete for testing positive for a prohibited substance. //BelaPAN