IOC Uncovering More Beijing Cheats

((HT: FoxSports))

Eight months after the closing ceremony, the IOC is uncovering more drug cheats from the Beijing Games.

The International Olympic Committee, staying true to its pledge to fight doping, said Tuesday that six athletes have been nabbed by retesting their blood samples for CERA, an advanced version of the blood-boosting hormone EPO.

A person familiar with the results told The Associated Press the latest tests caught three track and field athletes, two cyclists and one weightlifter.

The person, speaking on condition of anonymity because the names haven't been released by the IOC, said a male track and field athlete who won only one gold medal was one of the athletes. The other medalist was in cycling.

The IOC did not identify the athletes or sports involved, saying it was notifying the competitors through their national Olympic committees.

The Italian Olympic Committee said one of the six was an Italian athlete, though it declined to name him. The Italian news agency ANSA identified him as cyclist Davide Rebellin, silver medalist in the road race.

U.S. Olympic Committee spokesman Darryl Seibel said the federation hadn't received notification from the IOC of any adverse findings involving a U.S. athlete.

"Unless we hear otherwise, we are treating no news as good news," Seibel said.

The IOC reanalyzed a total of 948 samples from Beijing after new lab tests for CERA and insulin became available following the Olympics. The testing began in January and focused mainly on endurance events in cycling, rowing, swimming and athletics.

"The further analysis of the Beijing samples that we conducted should send a clear message that cheats can never assume that they have avoided detection," said Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the IOC medical commission.

Coaches, athletes and anti-doping organizations welcomed the announcement, saying it helps restore credibility to Olympic sports.

"I'm in favor of anything they're doing to clean up the sport," said Glen Mills, coach of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who won three gold medals in the 100 meters, 200 meters and 4x100 relay - all in world-record times.

Bolt "has not heard anything - and he will not hear anything," Mills said by telephone from Jamaica.

The IOC will wait for word from the national Olympic bodies before holding any disciplinary hearings. Athletes found guilty of doping face being disqualified from the Olympics and stripped of any medals they won.

The positive findings were based on "A" sample test results. Athletes will be allowed to ask for a testing of their backup "B" samples.

In the meantime, national and international bodies are free to impose provisional suspensions of athletes, the IOC said.

A Greek race walker, Athanasia Tsoumeleka, announced in January that she had tested positive in the new Beijing checks. Tsoumeleka, who finished ninth in Beijing in the 20K walk, was charged by a Greek prosecutor earlier this month with using banned drugs.

The IOC previously disqualified nine athletes for doping at the Aug. 8-24 Olympics. In addition, there were six doping cases involving horses in the equestrian competition.

The IOC has already stripped four athletes of Beijing medals - Ukrainian heptathlete Lyudmila Blonska (silver), Belarusian hammer throwers Vadim Devyatovskiy (silver) and Ivan Tsikhan (bronze) and North Korean shooter Kim Jong Su (silver and bronze) [pictured, thanks The Guardian)).

The IOC is storing doping samples for eight years so they can be tested retroactively when new detection methods are developed.

The World Anti-Doping Agency welcomed the IOC findings. Under the WADA code, athletes can be disciplined up to eight years from the date of a doping violation.

"We suggest that athletes who may be tempted to cheat keep this reality in mind," WADA president John Fahey said. "We believe that retrospective testing serves as a strong deterrent."
Lauryn Williams, a member of the U.S. track and field team in Beijing and a 2004 silver medalist in the 100 meters, also backed the testing system.

"To go ahead and weed out the cheaters is a good thing," she said. "To find out there are additional cheaters is not a great thing."

Well, Ain't That a Kick In The Head...

The guy in the gee is not, repeat NOT, fighting the guy in street clothes...
And this is not, repeat NOT, an example of white-collar crime...

The sport is taekwondo and the gentleman on the left is Angel Valodia Matos((pictured, thanks AFP/Getty Images/Jung Yeon-Je)) of Cuba.
The referee is the gentleman on the right and he is receiving, what Hall of Fame announcer Gordon Solie would refer to as a front kick, to his front.

The referee, Chakir Chelbat of Sweden, decided that Matos was taking his own sweet time during an injury treatment. Matos was disqualified giving his opponent, Kazakhstan's Arman Chilmanov, the bronze medal.

The Cuban federation has intimated that the Swedish official was on the take for the match. In return, the World Taekwondo Federation has started the process of banning both Matos and his coach for life.

OSG outsiders, reading over our shoulders as we type and submit the story from the road, suggest that Chelbat would have one hell of a lawsuit. Those of us at OSG concur, but wish the exchange rate from Cuban peso to a not-so-worthless currency was better than two chickens to the penny.

IOC To Investigate Gymnasts Ages... Finally...

After rumbling and grumbling from a few different fronts, the International Olympic Committee is finally going to ask gymnastic muckety mucks to investigate the reported ages of the gold-medal winning Chinese squad.

Multiple sources have found documentation from inside China itself that the ages of three of the women/girls are in doubt. He Kexin ((pictured, thanks How Hwee Young/EPA/Times of London)) Jiang Yuyuan and Jang Yilin may be as young as 14. An article from the government-run Xinhua News Agency from early November even goes as far as declaring He is only 14.

((More on the "Stryde Hax" website below))

"We've asked the gymnastics federation to look into it further," IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said Friday. "If there is a question mark and we have a concern, which we do, we ask the governing body of any sport to look into it."

The allowable age for gymnasts to participate in the games is 16.

The International Federation for Gymnastics ((FIG)) has always maintained that a valid passport is evidence enough for verifying a competitor's age. FIG has not questioned the Chinese to this point.

"We are not in a position to say `It's good, it's not good.' It's a government document," FIG president Bruno Grandi said earlier this week in an interview with The Associated Press.

The Chinese are doing their best Roger Clemens-on-Capitol Hill impression to date. He was asked in a press conference after the gymnastics competition about her age:

"I was born in 1992 and I'm 16 years old now," He said Monday. "The FIG has proved that. If I'm under 16, I couldn't have been competing here."

Whaddya wanna bet that the Bruno Grandi quote will be the basis of any and every investigation that FIG and the IOC conduct from this point forward...?

Just axin'...

SI's coverage is hyah

The Times of London has a boatload of coverage hyah

Jane Macartney's coverage on "Stryde Hax" is hyah

The "Stryde Hax" website is hyah.
Follow the chain of documents, it's tremendous- even if it's a long read...

Randi Kaye's story from CNN is below...
Thanks to CNN and the youtube...

What's Wrong With This Picture...???

What is it they say...?
One could be a mistake. Two is a coincidence. Three is a trend...

The Spanish delegation- not just men's basketball, but women's hoops, AND the tennis teams all decide to pull the same immature stunt through photography. There is a thought, from the Spanish perspective, that they were just being visually joke-ish:

"Hey, we're in China. So, we'll act as the Chinese do."

Wasn't this something we've done as fourth or fifth graders, and then we got it out of our collective systems...?

In this current day and age of over-the-top political correctness, people should be dropping the hammer on an entire athletic delegation. But, where is the outrage, or even the questioning of all this particular silliness...?

Apparently, outside of the United States, it doesn't exist.

And, actually, the traditional media here in the States ((remember them..?)) has glossed right over this, too. So much for offending other countries who will be more than happy to slam us at every chance through paper, print, or protest.

“It was supposed to be a picture that inspired the Olympic spirit,” Pau Gasol said.

Uh, sure...

Jorge Garbajosa and the Gasols are on this squad. Two of the three are, as of this writing, still on active NBA rosters. Garbajosa went home. So, what do we do as Americans about this...?

Laugh at their elementary silliness... and be sure to remind them at every opportunity. If you're David Stern, how do you handle this...? It's a bigger problem. If one of the red, white, and blue athletes did the same thing, Jason Kidd has the right idea as to how it was handled:

“We would’ve been already thrown out of the Olympics,” he told Yahoo! Sports in an interview with Adrian Wojnarowski. “At least, we wouldn’t have been able to come back to the U.S. …There would be suspensions.”

And for his European peers, well, Kidd suggested, “They won’t do anything to them. It’s a double standard.”

Sad to say, what really can be done...? FIBA won't do anything. Commissioner Stern may have a few words, but there won't be any time-out for the Spaniards when they return to active duty.

It's painfully obvious, when you're the greatest country in the world, that jealousy reigns more than common sense. If the Americans had pulled one, two, or three of those lovely pictures that we would have been roasted in the world spotlight.

Spain...? Oh, they're just being funny...
The United States...? Oh, they're the "evil United States"- they should know better.
They're picking on the little guy...
Why are they joking about the Chinese like that...?

Actually, we do know better...
And we have to show by example...
Everyone else just gets to get away with it until further notice...

Walk tall. Walk proud.
If we have to be Number One, let's just act like it.
And stick it to everyone else that way...
No pictures needed...