Doping

"L'argento della vergogna, la medaglia del veneto Rebellin ai Giochi di Pechino infangata dalla positività al c. e. r. a, l'epo di terza generazione, è la fine ignominiosa di una carriera segnata da tanti successi, ma anche da altrettanti sospetti. Il veneto era già finito mani e piedi nella vasta inchiesta doping della Guardia di Finanza di Padova del 2001. I militari avevano seguito per varie tappe del Giro di quell'anno una formazione, la Liquigas, di cui faceva parte il veneto. E adesso ecco spuntare le intercettazioni ambientali di quell'inchiesta. Si tratta di due brevi filmati datati 14 e 31 maggio 2001, nei quali dalla scritta esplicativa che scorre all'inizio e dal sonoro si evince chiaramente come Rebellin stia trattando prodotti vietati con il medico cui si affidava allora, Enrico Lazzaro."
(30 aprile 2009)

"Eight months after the end of the Beijing Olympic Games, six unnamed athletes have failed doping tests after previously monitored samples were re-checked, it was announced on Tuesday.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) confirmed of the 948 samples which were re-tested for CERA, a new version of a endurance-enhancing hormone, seven tests resulted in an adverse finding concerning six athletes."
(29 aprile 2009)

"With a gold medalist in one of its top events busted for doping at the Beijing Games, the troubled sport of track and field is once again at the center of an Olympic drug scandal.
Bahrain's Rashid Ramzi, the 1500-meter champion and his country's first gold medalist in track, was among three track athletes — and a half-dozen Olympians in all — snagged in the latest game of cat-and-mouse between cheaters and those who try to nail them.
The twist in the nabbing of Ramzi and the rest was their drug of choice. It's called CERA, a new form of EPO, which increases endurance by stimulating production of red blood cells.
Olympic drug testers recently came up with a way to detect CERA. They called for retesting of 948 samples taken from the Beijing Olympics; many of those retests were looking for CERA.
Six came back positive. One was from weightlifting, two from cycling — including a silver medalist — and three from track.
Of the four medals that have already been stripped for doping violations from Beijing, three were from track and field. Ramzi's would make it four.
Track and field medals have been stripped and redistributed for decades, though the scandals of the last decade have taken on more sinister elements of multilayered doping programs and attempts to cover them up.
In a scandal that dragged out for more than eight years, Marion Jones was stripped of all five of her medals — including three gold — after admitting that she was doping at the time of the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
The 2004 Athens Games were overshadowed by the scandal involving Greek sprinters Katerina Thanou and Kostas Kenteris, who were banned after allegedly evading drug tests on the eve of the games. Stripped of golds in Athens were winners in the men's hammer throw and discus and women's shot put.
The French anti-doping agency was the first to create a test for CERA, nabbing four cyclists, including third-place Tour de France finisher Bernhard Kohl of Austria, more than two months after the Tour ended."
(28 aprile 2009)