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Russian to judgment Engquist says she failed drug test, won't go to Salt Lake
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Former Olympic and world hurdles champion Ludmila Engquist said Sunday that she flunked a doping test and will not compete as a bobsledder in the Winter Olympics. "I took drugs secretly; my husband Johan didn't know about it," Engquist was quoted as saying in a report by Swedish news agency TT in Copenhagen, Denmark. "I'm telling this because I've been tested in Lillehammer and I know that test will be positive," Engquist said. The test was carried out after practicing on the Olympic bobsled track in Lillehammer, Norway, site of the 1994 Winter Games. The test result has not yet been analyzed. If positive, Engquist will be banned at least two years. Two years after winning the Olympic 100-meter hurdles gold medal in Atlanta in 1996, Engquist said she had a dream: she wanted to become the first woman to win gold medals in both Summer and Winter Games. American Edward Eagan became an Olympic boxing champion in 1920 and sat in the winning four-man bobsled in 1932, but no woman has made the Olympic summer and winter gold-medal double so far. The Russian-born Engquist, who placed seventh as a bobsled rookie with Swedish teammate Karin Olsson in a World Cup race on Utah's Olympic Park track in February, said she bought illegal substances when she visited Russia in the summer. "I bought a few pills and I knew that they contained illegal substances, among them anabolic steroids," she said. Engquist, 37, received a four-year drug ban after failing a test for steroids during a meet at Lievin, France, in February 1993, but maintained that her vitamin supplement had been spiked by her previous husband, Nikolai Narozhilenko. That ban was lifted by the Russian courts, and the IAAF, world track's governing body, reinstated her in December 1995 under its "exceptional-circumstances rule." Swedish sports officials were stunned by Engquist's announcement. "Shocking and terrible!" Swedish Olympic Committee chairman Stefan Lindeberg said. "I just can't understand it's true. It's shocking that she has made it." The Swedish Olympic Committee supported Engquist's new career in bobsledding. Later this year, she would have received US$15,000 in training support to share with Olsson. Lindeberg said Engquist now probably would be first remembered as a cheater and not as a great track athlete. "It's terrible. I don't understand how a person who has achieved such success can do this," Lindeberg said. Engquist, who made a stunning comeback in 1999 after being diagnosed with breast cancer, retired from athletics just two months before last year's Summer Olympics in Sydney because of leg (calf) problems. She won the Olympic 100-meter hurdles gold medal in Atlanta in 1996 and the same event at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo when competing for the Soviet Union, and in the 1997 Worlds in Athens, Greece, for Sweden. She captured her last medal in track, a bronze in the 1999 Worlds in Seville, Spain, just a few months after she had surgery to remove her right breast. Engquist moved to Sweden in 1993 and became a Swedish citizen in June 1996.
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