mzungo.org was thrilled to report some weeks ago that mzungo.org friend Asbel Kiprop will get his well deserved Olympic gold medal. Only that he had to wait for the positive B test of Rashid Ramzi.Well, there it finally is! Khaleej Times reports:
HAMBURG - Examinations of the b-sample have confirmed that cyclists Stefan Schumacher and Davide Rebellin, as well as 1,500 metres Olympic champion Rashid Ramzi and two other athletes, have tested positive for the latest generation of the blood booster EPO.
German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), in a report made available ahead of Wednesday’s publication, said that the lawyers of the five athletes have met to discuss a strategy in their appeals before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
Schumacher will be heard before CAS on Wednesday. The German was caught for using CERA at retests of Tour de France 2008 samples and of those retested by the International Olympic Committee from the Beijing Olympics.
Italy’s Rebellin, the Bahrain runner Ramzi, Greek walker Athanasia Tsoumeleka and Croatian 800m runner Vanja Perisic were also caught in the IOC retests, with the b-sample confirming the original finding, according to the FAZ. The former world champion Ramzi won 1,500m gold in Beijing while Rebellin got a cycling silver in China. The other three did not medal, but Schumacher won both time trials at the 2008 Tour before being disqualified. Weightlifter Yudelquis Contreras of the Dominican Republic also submitted a positive a-sample, but the b-test was announced last month to be negative. The athlete was cleared.
The IOC keeps drug samples for eight years and they are subject to retests when new test methods are introduced. The tests for CERA were made available after the Olympics last August. Schumacher was banned for two years over the positive Tour samples and now faces a life ban for testing positive as well in the Olympic samples. The others face two-year ban, with Ramzi and Rebellin then also to lose their medals.
The German has protested his innocence. Schumacher’s lawyer, Michael Lehner, has suggested he will contest the management of the a-samples and has named the French IOC lab in Chatenay-Malabry, which examined the samples, as biased. Lehner said the IOC had the b-samples tested without his approval and that he was not invited as a witness.
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