LionDen
02-17-2006, 10:43 AM
Pyleva becomes first athlete to fail new Olympic drug test in Turin
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/060216/060216_pyleva_hmed_830a.hmedium.jpg
Russia's Olga Pyleva reacts after crossing the finish line in second place in the women's 15 km individual biathlon event. Pyleva was stripped of her silver medal for failing a drug test.
CESANA, Italy - Russian biathlon star Olga Pyleva was thrown out of the Turin Games and stripped of her silver medal Thursday for doping, the first athlete caught in the tightest drug net in Winter Olympics history.
Pyleva was favored heading into Thursday’s 7.5km sprint to win her second medal of the games. As athletes were walking up to the starting line, an announcer told the crowd that Pyleva was scratched because she had fallen ill.
But it didn’t take long for news of the real reason to spread. A urine sample Pyleva submitted after the 15km event on Monday tested positive for the stimulant carphedon, which she said was in an over-the-counter medication she’d taken.
“Oh my goodness!” American biathlete Rachel Steer said. “I just noticed they said she was sick, and I saw her last night — and she didn’t look like she was getting sick.”
In Pyleva’s absence at the sprint, there was another shock: Florence Baverel-Robert took the gold. The Frenchwoman, competing in her final Olympics, never had won a major competition in the event that combines cross-country skiing and target shooting.
An IOC panel was hastily convened to hear Pyleva’s case. Less than two hours after the race went on without her, she was kicked out of the Turin Games.
“It’s a shocking situation,” Pyleva told Russia’s state-run First Channel, “because I’ve always been against using banned medications.”
Russian officials at the Olympics were equally quick with an explanation: A doctor who treated Pyleva in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk for an ankle injury in January gave her an over-the-counter medication that did not list carphedon as one of its ingredients, said Dr. Nikolai Durmanov, head of the Russian Anti-Doping Committee.
“This was 100 percent the physician’s mistake,” Durmanov told The Associated Press.
Pyleva told First Channel: “I’ve been working with this doctor and I trust her a lot, in fact. And what’s happened now is just monstrous stupidity.”
Durmanov said he met with Pyleva after she was told of the failed test. Asked how she was feeling, he said: “It is better not to talk about it. She is in a very bad condition.”
Under the IOC’s rules, athletes testing positive at the Olympics are considered guilty if a banned substance is found, regardless of the circumstances. Durmanov said no appeal was planned at this time.
“It’s a catastrophe for us,” he said. “We are not going to start some special process, no appeals so far. ... Her brilliant career has been finished in such a dramatic way without her being guilty.”
Further possible sanctions against Pyleva — such as a long-term ban from competition — are up to the International Biathlon Union.
“I think it’s a great pity for the sport,” Baverel-Robert said of Pyleva’s drug test, “but that’s as far as my thoughts on the matter really go.”
The 30-year-old Pyleva is one of the biggest stars in biathlon, which typically draws more than 30,000 spectators to World Cup events and is Europe’s most popular televised winter sport. She also won gold and bronze medals at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.
The silver she won Monday now goes to Germany’s Martina Glagow. The bronze falls to Albina Akhatova, Pyleva’s Russian teammate, who also took fourth in Thursday’s event.
Members of the Russian biathlon team did not speak to reporters after Thursday’s race, but Akhatova told the European sports cable channel Eurosport that she is “not glad” about receiving the bronze.
“I cannot say that I am happy because it is not a good medal for me,” Akhatova told the network. “I think that this is terrible, firstly for Olga, because she is not feeling so well, for the girls in our team, and of course for the coach.”
The head of Russia’s biathlon federation, Alexander Tikhonov, said athletes have been told repeatedly only to use medications approved by team doctors.
“We warned them a thousand times and again,” he told Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency. “Take only medical formulas that are in the team and come only to our doctors.”
The IOC has conducted 380 tests since the athletes’ village opened Jan. 31; Pyleva is the first to be caught by the most rigorous doping control program ever at a Winter Olympics. A total of 1,200 samples are being tested — a 72 percent increase over the number in Salt Lake City, where there were seven doping cases.
Brazilian bobsledder and former hammer thrower Armando dos Santos was the first athlete sent home from the Turin Games for using steroids, but that was the result of a test taken before the Olympics began. A dozen cross-country skiers were suspended five days for elevated hemoglobin, considered health checks by the ski federation that administers them — though they can indicate blood doping. Seven have been retested and cleared to compete; one failed a retest, and the other four had not yet been tested again.
It was a day full of the unexpected at the Olympic biathlon course as the heavy snowfall at the start of the race turned to sunshine and slush by the end, when Ukraine’s Lilia Efremova took the bronze. The only favorite to reach the podium was Anna Carin Olofsson of Sweden, who won silver.
She crossed just 2.4 seconds behind Baverel-Robert’s winning time of 22 minutes, 31.4 seconds. Efremova was 6.6 seconds behind Baverel-Robert, who set up her victory with 10 perfect shots on the range.
“I have never won a major race, so this is incredible,” the winner said.
So was Pyleva’s suspension.
“I’m not going to make any judgment, guilt or innocence right now,” said Steer, who finished 35th. “I’m just glad I know doping control’s going on.”
So is American Tracy Barnes, who said it hadn’t been obvious to the competitors through the first week of competition that doping control was as stringent as it is at World Cups.
Now, there is no doubt.
“I hope that someday our sport is completely clean,” Barnes said. “It’s a great sport. I don’t see how people can live with themselves doing stuff like that.”
The Associated Press
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/060216/060216_pyleva_hmed_830a.hmedium.jpg
Russia's Olga Pyleva reacts after crossing the finish line in second place in the women's 15 km individual biathlon event. Pyleva was stripped of her silver medal for failing a drug test.
CESANA, Italy - Russian biathlon star Olga Pyleva was thrown out of the Turin Games and stripped of her silver medal Thursday for doping, the first athlete caught in the tightest drug net in Winter Olympics history.
Pyleva was favored heading into Thursday’s 7.5km sprint to win her second medal of the games. As athletes were walking up to the starting line, an announcer told the crowd that Pyleva was scratched because she had fallen ill.
But it didn’t take long for news of the real reason to spread. A urine sample Pyleva submitted after the 15km event on Monday tested positive for the stimulant carphedon, which she said was in an over-the-counter medication she’d taken.
“Oh my goodness!” American biathlete Rachel Steer said. “I just noticed they said she was sick, and I saw her last night — and she didn’t look like she was getting sick.”
In Pyleva’s absence at the sprint, there was another shock: Florence Baverel-Robert took the gold. The Frenchwoman, competing in her final Olympics, never had won a major competition in the event that combines cross-country skiing and target shooting.
An IOC panel was hastily convened to hear Pyleva’s case. Less than two hours after the race went on without her, she was kicked out of the Turin Games.
“It’s a shocking situation,” Pyleva told Russia’s state-run First Channel, “because I’ve always been against using banned medications.”
Russian officials at the Olympics were equally quick with an explanation: A doctor who treated Pyleva in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk for an ankle injury in January gave her an over-the-counter medication that did not list carphedon as one of its ingredients, said Dr. Nikolai Durmanov, head of the Russian Anti-Doping Committee.
“This was 100 percent the physician’s mistake,” Durmanov told The Associated Press.
Pyleva told First Channel: “I’ve been working with this doctor and I trust her a lot, in fact. And what’s happened now is just monstrous stupidity.”
Durmanov said he met with Pyleva after she was told of the failed test. Asked how she was feeling, he said: “It is better not to talk about it. She is in a very bad condition.”
Under the IOC’s rules, athletes testing positive at the Olympics are considered guilty if a banned substance is found, regardless of the circumstances. Durmanov said no appeal was planned at this time.
“It’s a catastrophe for us,” he said. “We are not going to start some special process, no appeals so far. ... Her brilliant career has been finished in such a dramatic way without her being guilty.”
Further possible sanctions against Pyleva — such as a long-term ban from competition — are up to the International Biathlon Union.
“I think it’s a great pity for the sport,” Baverel-Robert said of Pyleva’s drug test, “but that’s as far as my thoughts on the matter really go.”
The 30-year-old Pyleva is one of the biggest stars in biathlon, which typically draws more than 30,000 spectators to World Cup events and is Europe’s most popular televised winter sport. She also won gold and bronze medals at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.
The silver she won Monday now goes to Germany’s Martina Glagow. The bronze falls to Albina Akhatova, Pyleva’s Russian teammate, who also took fourth in Thursday’s event.
Members of the Russian biathlon team did not speak to reporters after Thursday’s race, but Akhatova told the European sports cable channel Eurosport that she is “not glad” about receiving the bronze.
“I cannot say that I am happy because it is not a good medal for me,” Akhatova told the network. “I think that this is terrible, firstly for Olga, because she is not feeling so well, for the girls in our team, and of course for the coach.”
The head of Russia’s biathlon federation, Alexander Tikhonov, said athletes have been told repeatedly only to use medications approved by team doctors.
“We warned them a thousand times and again,” he told Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency. “Take only medical formulas that are in the team and come only to our doctors.”
The IOC has conducted 380 tests since the athletes’ village opened Jan. 31; Pyleva is the first to be caught by the most rigorous doping control program ever at a Winter Olympics. A total of 1,200 samples are being tested — a 72 percent increase over the number in Salt Lake City, where there were seven doping cases.
Brazilian bobsledder and former hammer thrower Armando dos Santos was the first athlete sent home from the Turin Games for using steroids, but that was the result of a test taken before the Olympics began. A dozen cross-country skiers were suspended five days for elevated hemoglobin, considered health checks by the ski federation that administers them — though they can indicate blood doping. Seven have been retested and cleared to compete; one failed a retest, and the other four had not yet been tested again.
It was a day full of the unexpected at the Olympic biathlon course as the heavy snowfall at the start of the race turned to sunshine and slush by the end, when Ukraine’s Lilia Efremova took the bronze. The only favorite to reach the podium was Anna Carin Olofsson of Sweden, who won silver.
She crossed just 2.4 seconds behind Baverel-Robert’s winning time of 22 minutes, 31.4 seconds. Efremova was 6.6 seconds behind Baverel-Robert, who set up her victory with 10 perfect shots on the range.
“I have never won a major race, so this is incredible,” the winner said.
So was Pyleva’s suspension.
“I’m not going to make any judgment, guilt or innocence right now,” said Steer, who finished 35th. “I’m just glad I know doping control’s going on.”
So is American Tracy Barnes, who said it hadn’t been obvious to the competitors through the first week of competition that doping control was as stringent as it is at World Cups.
Now, there is no doubt.
“I hope that someday our sport is completely clean,” Barnes said. “It’s a great sport. I don’t see how people can live with themselves doing stuff like that.”
The Associated Press