BRUSSELS, Belgium — With only one week to go before the Beijing Olympics, Russia suddenly has its own version of a BALCO doping scandal involving some of the track team’s biggest stars.
After a 1 1/2-year investigation, the IAAF provisionally suspended seven female Russian athletes Thursday, accusing them of tampering with their urine samples.
“There are many questions. The first is: What in fact happened? There will be a special inquiry,” Russian Olympic Committee anti-doping chief Nikolay Durmanov said. “A less important question but a more pertinent one is: Why is the issue of last year’s tests emerging just a week ahead of the Games? Couldn’t this question have been discussed with us in May, June or March?”
The list includes Yelena Soboleva, a world record-holder and world champion middle-distance runner who was favored to win the 800 and 1,500 meters.
The athletes could still compete at the Beijing Games if they were to get an emergency ruling lifting the provisional suspension.
Besides Soboleva, also provisionally suspended were: two-time world 1,500 champion Tatyana Tomashova; middle-distance runners Yulia Fomenko, Svetlana Cherkasova and Olga Yegorova; hammer thrower Gulfiya Khanafeyeva; and discus thrower Darya Pishchalnikova.
Meanwhile, the Romanian Olympic Committee said middle-distance runners Elena Antoci and Cristina Vasiloiu tested positive for the blood booster EPO and could be dropped from its team pending a second test.
Olympic track and field competition begins Aug. 15.
Sharapova, Baghdatis out.
Maria Sharapova and Marcos Baghdatis will miss the Olympics because of a right shoulder injury and right wrist injury, respectively.
Others who won’t play in the Aug. 11-17 tournament for various reasons include Andy Roddick, Amelie Mauresmo and Mary Pierce.
Relay record questioned
The new head of USA Track & Field wants the 1,600-meter world record set by the United States a decade ago erased as a national mark because it is tainted by doping.
The record of 2 minutes, 54.20 seconds was set at Uniondale, N.Y., on July 22, 1998, by the team of Jerome Young, Antonio Pettigrew, Tyree Washington and Michael Johnson.
In May, Pettigrew admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs dating to 1997. As a result, the U.S. Anti- Doping Agency has invalidated all of Pettigrew’s marks since that date.
“Removing the record is the right thing to do, pure and simple,” said USATF chief executive officer Doug Logan, who wants the record reconsidered at the USATF annual meeting this year.
If the mark is invalidated, the record would revert to the 2:54.29 ran by Andrew Valmon, Quincy Watts, Butch Reynolds and Johnson at the 1993 world championships.
Footnotes.
There will be 4,500 doping tests for the Beijing Games, a 25 percent increase from the 2004 Athens Olympics. That includes 1,300 precompetition tests and almost 800 blood tests.
• German soccer club Werder Bremen will appeal to the highest court in international sports, looking to overturn a FIFA decision obligating teams to release players 23 and under for the Olympics. The Associated Press
