The Olympics

The Olympics

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News, information and stories about the Olympic Games in Athens 2004 and the Olympics in general up until 2007.

Thursday, May 05, 2005

IOC Blow It

Dick Pound, World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) chairman, claims that both the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the official lab of the Athens Olympics made mistakes that enabled time-trial champion Tyler Hamilton to escape charges of alleged blood doping.

Quote:

"As far as I understand...(the lab director) blew it and also the IOC blew it,".

Hamilton tested positive for a blood transfusion in August, after winning the Olympic time-trial gold medal.

However, he kept his gold medal because the IOC said the result of a follow-up sample was "non-conclusive" because it had been destroyed by being deep-frozen.

Pound went on to say:

"The lab director didn't deal with (the sample) right away as a positive case, and the IOC didn't notice the problem for several days...It should have been reported as a positive case instead of merely suspicious, and the IOC should have been reading these forms every day...they didn't respond quickly enough,".

In December, Greek prosecutors launched an investigation into the blunder. They say that they want to determine if the deep freezing was deliberate or negligent.

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