Russia's European 400m champion tested positive

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Sydney: Russia's European indoor 400 metres champion Svetlana Pospelova has tested positive for the banned steroid stanozolol in an out-of-competition drug test carried out at the Sydney Games, Olympic chiefs said on Saturday.

However, the test cannot be regarded as a complete positive case until all the details have been discussed and analysed, athletics officials said.

The test was taken a few days after Pospelova failed to reach the second round of the 400 metres eight days ago. The 20-year-old athlete has already left the Games.,

"It is for stanozolol but the athlete has left," International Olympic Committee medical commission chief Alexandre de Merode confirmed.Francois Carrard, IOC director-general, said the case would be discussed at a meeting of the IOC's executive board on Sunday.

The IOC cannot expel the athlete from the Games since she has already left. It is therefore likely that it will pass the case on to the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF), the world governing body of track and field.

If the positive test is confirmed Pospelova faces a compulsory two-year ban for a steroid offence under IAAF rules.

Stanozolol was the substance found in the urine of Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson at the Seoul Olympics in 1988 when Johnson was subsequently stripped of his men's 100 metres gold medal.

Asked if he was surprised that athletes were still using the old drug, de Merode said, "I'm not surprised. We can see that, when athletes take something, they sometimes take old well-known drugs."

Dick Pound, the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), expressed astonishment that an athlete would take steroids.

"Why they think steroids can't be tested for, I don't know," he said.

Big impression

Pospelova made a big impression this year when she won the European indoor title in Ghent in Belgium in February and the European Cup 400 metres in July, only to disappoint in Sydney.

The case was discussed by the IOC's medical commission in the early hours of Saturday morning and was on the agenda of a brief IOC executive board meeting around breakfast-time.

De Merode said one of the reasons the meeting about the case had been put back until Sunday was that they had so far received no explanation from the Russian.

Under IOC rules a competitor has the right to account for any positive finding.

Pospelova, a member of the St Petersburg club, has improved her best 400 metres time from 52.58 to 50.42 in the last season.

But despite winning the European indoor and Cup titles, she could only clock 53.34 in her 400 heat on the first day of the athletics programme. Officials are conducting out out-of-competition tests for the first time at the Sydney Games.

Before the athletics started, Belarus hammer thrower Vadim Devyatovsky was sent home after testing positive for nandrolone in an out-of-competition test in the Olympic village.

Five competitors, none of them from athletics, have tested positive for banned drugs in competition tests carried out during the Olympics although several athletes were banned from the Games for failing out-of-competition tests before the start.

Four of the five --- Bulgarian weightlifters Ivan Ivanov, Izabela Dragneva, and Sevdalin Minchev and 17-year-old Romanian gymnast Andreea Raducan -- were stripped of medals. Latvian rower Andris Reinholds failed a test but did not win a medal



(c) Reuters Limited.