Olympic winners face doping inquiry

Date: 23-04-2003 Posted by: Anabolic Info TeamUnited Kingdom

Drugs officials are investigating reports that 61 members of the Italy Olympic team in Sydney in 2000, including several gold medal-winners, had abnormally high levels of human growth hormone (HGH).

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has sent an official to Italy to inquire into the scandal, which first erupted during the Games when an Italian newspaper reported a scientific survey that showed 61 competitors had HGH levels between 30 and 70 per cent above normal.

Dick Pound, the WADA president, said yesterday: “There was apparently a research programme on HGH in Italy. The issue is whether some of the athletes were part of that study and whether they were given HGH. We do not know the nature and extent of this.”

Pound, a leading member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said that WADA had sent an official to Italy in the past eight months to investigate the issue and that he had interviewed CONI, the Italian National Olympic Committee. Its Scientific Commission tested all 538 Italian competitors before their departure for Sydney and their findings were leaked to Corriere della Sera.

“We have got part of the story but not all of it,” Pound said. “We have not got any of the documents that the prosecutors in Italy possess.” There is a continuing series of civil investigations into several sports, including cycling and football.

Gianni Petrucci, the CONI president, has denied that any Italian gold medal-winners were guilty of doping and said the results were a research study and should not have been publicised. News of the investigation comes only five days after it was disclosed in the United States that several American competitors, including Carl Lewis, the multiple Olympic athletics champion, were permitted to take part in the 1988 Games despite “inadvertent” use of banned substances earlier that year.

Among the 2000 medal- winners named in the Italian newspapers were Josefa Idem Guerrini, winner of the women’s kayak canoeing title, and Massimiliano Rosolino, in the 200 metres individual medley. Guerrini has dismissed the reports, saying that “they are not worth the paper they are written on”, while Rosolino threatened to sue the newspaper and represent Australia, where he is now training, if the allegations continued.

At the moment there is no legally acceptable test for HGH because it occurs naturally in the body. However, its use is widespread across a range of events and Ben Johnson, the disgraced Canadian sprinter, admitted taking the hormone during his athletics career. Competitors believe that HGH can help the anabolic action of the body and broaden the bones.