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Power outage Lifting's shining moment dimmed by drug scandalsPosted: Thursday September 28, 2000 12:00 AMUpdated: Thursday November 09, 2000 10:27 AM
SYDNEY, Australia (CNNSI.com) -- For weightlifting, the Sydney Olympics may be known as the shame games. Instead of the attention being focused on Pocket Hercules, the multiple gold medalists and broken records, it was focused on positive drugs test and multiple suspension. The sport became a tarnished guessing game. By the end of the competition, the suspicion and accusations hanging over the sport were so heavy and threatening that not even a super heavyweight could lift them. Certainly, there were moments that will long be remembered by those who follow the sport -- in Turkey, Greece, Iran and Bulgaria -- where whole nations tune in to watch their stars. Iran became a heavyweight, winning the two biggest men's weights with breakthrough performances by Hossein Tavakoli and Hossein Rezazadeh. Even the man renowned as the strongest in the world, Russia's 385-pound Andrei Chemerkin, couldn't outlift the 22-year-old Rezazadeh in a battle of 1,000-pound lifters. China won all four women's weights it was allowed to enter, and probably would have won the other three. The smallest lifter, the 4-foot-11 Halil Mutlu of Turkey, won by a big margin and took home a second gold medal.
Countries never before associated with the sport -- Mexico and Colombia among them -- came away not just with medals, but gold ones. Naim Suleymanoglu, the Pocket Hercules from Turkey, was dragged out of a three-year retirement to try for a record fourth gold medal. But he missed all three of his lifts, a disappointing performance for a man previously judged to be the greatest lifter of all time. Not only did he not win a fourth gold, he saw Pyrros Dimas -- the talkative and flashy Deion Sanders of the sport -- and Khaki Kakiasvilis of Greece tie his record of three gold medals, and on successive nights. They will go for a fourth on the home soil of Greece in 2004, where tickets may be harder to get than Sunday at the Masters. "I think Naim made a mistake that he stopped training and competing and I don't plan to do something like that," Dimas said. "I plan to continue competing ... and I believe I will win a fourth." But the lasting memory of many will be not just the cheaters who were caught, but the suspicion there were some that were not. After positive drug tests, three Bulgarians were stripped of the medals they had won. They included the very first women's gold medalist, Izabela Dragneva. Her gold went instead to Tara Nott, a U.S. three-sport star whose third sport, weightlifting, turned out to be her best. The U.S. women ended up with two medals, Nott's gold and heavyweight Cheryl Haworth's bronze. "Obviously, we're very excited to win two medals," U.S. women's coach Michael Cohen said. "But while I'm happy for Tara, I'm concerned about the problems in our sport." Two Romanians, Traian Ciharean and Adrian Mateas, tested positive even before the games began and were tossed out of the Olympic Village. Some others -- some of them world-ranked -- were mysteriously scratched off their country's entry lists as Sydney grew closer. Others tested positive in their countries' own testing before they could be tested in Sydney. The day the Bulgarian drug scandal broke, two Qatar lifters who had trained in Bulgaria and were regarded as possible medalists dropped out of that night's lifting, supposedly for a stomach ailment. The International Weightlifting Federation tossed the rest of Bulgaria's lifters out of the Games, only to have one reinstated by the Court of Arbitration for Sport a few hours before his event. Alan Tsagaev went on to win a silver medal. Romania also faced banishment following three positive drug tests within a year, but was allowed to stay in by paying a $50,00 fine. Apparently in a show of support for weightlifting, and its future in the Olympics, IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch showed up one night after the Bulgarian mess. But if so many weightlifters are testing dirty, how can anyone be confident that everybody is clean in the clean and jerk? "I think they're trying their best, but it's clear they haven't been successful," IOC vice president Dick Pound said. "It's a great traditional sport. I would hate to see it dropped from the program unless it's clear nobody is going to do anything about the problem." The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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