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Raducan may lose all-around gold medal
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Women's gymnastics all-around winner Andreea Raducan of Romania tested positive for drugs - described as cold medication by a Romanian official -- and could be stripped of a gold medal, an IOC official said early Tuesday. IOC drug chief Prince Alexandre de Merode said the medical commission would recommend that the 16-year-old Raducan lose her all-around medal but be allowed to keep her team gold and vault silver because the Romanians said a doctor was at fault for giving her the medicine. "We consider it was not a voluntary action. It was given to her by the medical doctor," de Merode said. Romanian Olympic Committee president Ion Tiriac said Romanian officials were told Monday afternoon of the positive test, but Raducan competed anyway in the individual floor exercise final that night and finished seventh out of eight. Tiriac said Raducan had taken two cold medicine pills, one containing pseudoephedrine and the second an over-the-counter drug. "We believe this case is completely irrelevant," Tiriac said. "The athlete is the best gymnast in the world at this time -- she has proved it."
De Merode said the medical commission also will recommend that the team doctor be banned from the Sydney, Salt Lake City and Athens Olympics. Tiriac said pseudoephedrine is "not at all on the [banned drug] list of the international gymnastics federation but is on the list of the IOC" and had been taken by other athletes. The drug, he said, "is a medicine that is not enhancing but diminishing performance." Raducan's petiteness -- 148 centimeters tall and 37 kgs (4-foot-10, 82 pounds) -- contributed to the positive test, he said. He didn't say when she took the medication.
Raducan's dark eyes and pint-sized frame have earned her comparisons to Nadia Comaneci, who at the Montreal Olympics in 1976 became the first gymnast to score a perfect 10. In Sydney, Raducan became the first Romanian to win the all-around title since Coaneci. Raducan and a large Romanian delegation arrived at a downtown Sydney hotel Monday night to appear before a meeting of the IOC medical panel. The commission will report to the IOC executive board Tuesday morning. Team coach Octavian Belu threatened to withdraw the whole team from the games, the private Romanian news agency Mediafax reported. He did not attend news conferences following Monday's competition. "Andree Raducan is an innocent child. She is not capable of
such a thing as doping," Dana Encutescu, federal secretary of the
Romanian Gymnastic Association, told Romanian media.
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