German sprinter Katrin Krabbe, trying to avoid her second doping ban on a legal loophole, was suspended for two years for unsportsmanlike behavior instead.
The International Amateur Athletic Federation also said it sent the case of five-time cross country champion John Ngugi of Kenya to an arbitration panel.Ngugi was banned for four years after refusing to submit to an out-of-competition test earlier this year. The Kenyan federation was pressing the IAAF for an arbitration hearing and the IAAF Council approved the move Sunday.
The Council rejected applications by Iris Biba and Lyudmila Narozhilenko to have their bans dropped.
Biba, a German 10,000-meter runner, and Narozhilenko, a Russian hurdler banned four four years, were contesting the suspensions on grounds of "exceptional circumstances."
Biba said she took steroids inadvertently, thinking she was taking sleeping tablets given to her by her coach. Narozhilenko claimed that her estranged husband put steroids into her prescribed medication.
Krabbe, who won the 100 and 200 in the 1991 World Championships, was suspended for four years after failing an out-of-competition drug test last year. In contradiction of the IAAF sanctions, the German federation DLV reduced the suspension to one year.
The DLV said it had no provisions for out-of-competition testing in its own rules and that German courts wouldn't accept a four-year ban.
In May, the IAAF Council said Krabbe would remain suspended until it decided whether the case needed to go to arbitration.
Arne Ljungqvist, head of the IAAF medical commission, said it would not be treated as a drug case because of the legal situation in Germany.
The DLV used the same unsportsmanlike clause to ban Krabbe, but the IAAF felt the one-year ban was too short and extended it for another two years, Ljungqvist said.
The decision to ban Krabbe for unsportsmanlike conduct rather than for doping stemmed from the Council's feeling that Krabbe could win her case before an arbitration panel.
"The idea was not to let away any person because of a legal or technical loophole, not to have double standards," said Istvan Gyulai, IAAF Secretary General.