SYDNEY, Australia — This isn't a sinister case of an athlete pumping herself full of steroids or human growth hormone. Andreea Raducan isn't Ben Johnson. At 4 feet 10 inches and 82 pounds, her slight body is hardly bulging with muscles.
She had a fever and a cold. She wanted to feel better. So the Romanian team doctor gave her Nurofen, an over-the-counter medication for colds and flu that anyone can walk into a pharmacy and buy.
She swallowed two little pills, and now she has one gold medal instead of two.
The 16-year-old was stripped of her gold from the women's all-around Tuesday after she tested positive for pseudoephedrine, a banned stimulant. She is the first gymnast ever to be stripped of a medal because of a drug violation, and Romanian Olympic Committee president Ion Tiriac said he would appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Across town, C.J. Hunter fought tears Tuesday as he denied that he would ever take anabolic steroids, saying his career means nothing compared to wife Marion Jones' quest for five Olympic gold medals.
At a packed news conference in a downtown Sydney hotel, the normally gruff 330-pound shot putter nearly broke down several times as he said he didn't know why he had tested positive at the Bislett Games in Oslo, Norway, on July 28.
Later in the session, Hunter joined his nutritionist in blaming an iron supplement that may have been contaminated. His wife had not taken the supplement, Hunter said.
"I'm going to defend myself vigorously," Hunter said as attorney Johnnie Cochran watched from the wings. "We've put together a great team, and I'm quite positive that when everything is said and done, I'll be exonerated."
Meanwhile, Olympics watchers are stunned by widespread drug use.
Numbers make the difference in any Olympics, but these statistics are just plain nauseating: Four medals surrendered. Five nations sullied. Six athletes punished.
This isn't the way it was supposed to be.
This is what they have come to so far this month. Bulgaria: three weightlifters thrown out and one gold medal lost (weight-loss diuretic). Latvia: one rower caught (steroids). Belarus: one hammer thrower banished (steroids again). The United States: Hunter, shot putter and husband of Olympic superstar Jones, under siege for a positive test in July (steroids once more, 1,000 times the allowed limit).
When things go bad at the Olympics, they go bad in a big way — in front of a rapt world that demands good things from its "amateur" athletes and its signature sporting events.
"We still love watching them. We still believe in the great qualities that sport can produce in people," says Richard Light of the University of Melbourne, who studies how sport shapes young people.
In Sydney, urine has become a headline act. Despite the past fortnight of amazing achievements, this is now The Conversation Topic, much to the chagrin of athletes and the International Olympic Committee, whose anti-doping efforts are nabbing drug users — but also, in a niggling byproduct, drawing attention to them.
"Last week, people talked about the weather, about the swimming pool. Now they're talking about dope," says Shawn O'Rourke, a Canisius College professor who studies how athletes behave — and how they don't. "No matter what happens from here to the end of the Olympics, people will refer to this Olympics as the one where the most athletes tested positive."
The IOC is quick to underscore its measures are effective; after all, they're catching who they're supposed to catch, IOC director general Francois Carrard noted Tuesday, even while acknowledging that Raducan's transgression was probably inadvertent.
That zero-tolerance approach could help assuage disgust. Scott Becher, president of the Florida-based Sports and Sponsorships Inc., says the IOC's approach — test, detect, expel, embarrass — can apply an important salve.
"We know that temptation exists," Becher says. "What's more important to the credibility of the sport is how the leagues and events handle the infractions."
That can be difficult in an arena where credibility and marketing go hand in hand.
Ralph A. Oliva, a marketing professor at C.J. Hunter's alma mater, Penn State University, sees the change as part of a "maturing" of the Olympic brand name. The IOC's coping techniques, he says, aren't that different from Tylenol's after the 1982 cyanide scare or Firestone's in recent weeks.
"The Olympics needs to deal with these incidents to strengthen the brand," he says.
Resilient Olympics aren't new. The games have survived a genuine disaster — Munich in 1972, when terrorists executed 11 Israeli athletes at the Summer Games. Subsequent turmoil, even the terrifying 1996 Atlanta bombing, pales in comparison.
Richard Lapchick, director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society, acknowledges bad associations — particularly the Salt Lake City bribery scandal — have created "a cloud that lingers." But he says such problems are mitigated by the increasing internationalism of the games, which offer a concrete vision of a global village.
But, sadly, more clouds are on the horizon. Salt Lake City comes with a scandal prepackaged. The IOC already is jittery about Athens' ability to pull off the 2004 Summer Games. And in Sydney, the doping police continue their patrol.
Raducan appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport Tuesday, challenging the decision the International Olympic Committee's executive board made earlier in the day. A hearing was scheduled for Wednesday.
The Romanian team doctor who gave Raducan the drug was expelled from the games and suspended through the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake and 2004 Summer Games in Athens.
"We feel we have no choice," said Francois Carrard, the Olympic committee's director general. "It's tough, but that's what it's all about. In the fight against doping, we have to be tough and be blind to emotions and feelings."
Raducan was allowed to keep her gold from the team competition and silver in the vault final. But losing the all-around gold was crushing for the wispy teen, whose dark coloring and pixyish charm evoked memories of Nadia Comaneci, Romania's last Olympic darling.
"I think she's probably devastated right now. She's 16. She doesn't know what's happening," said Comaneci, who now runs a gym in Norman, Okla., with her husband, 1984 Olympian Bart Conner. "She's a victim of a mistake of the doctor. It's not the fault of the girl's."
Even the Olympic committee acknowledged that Raducan's case is not like most others. She took a common cold medicine, and it provided "no competitive advantage at that competition," Carrard said.
Raducan's gold ended up with teammate Simona Amanar, whose silver went to yet another Romanian, Maria Olaru. Liu Xuan of China took the bronze.
Romania has waited 24 years for a gymnast who could captivate the world like Comaneci, who scored the first perfect 10 at the Montreal Olympics in 1976.
The Romanians have won dozens of Olympic medals since then, but could never capture the all-around, the biggest prize on sport's grandest stage.
Until Raducan.
Performing to "Riverdance" on Thursday, Raducan pranced across the floor, a wide, infectious smile on her face. She looked almost like Peter Pan as she tumbled, flying across the floor with ease. When she finished, she ran to coach Octavian Belu and climbed onto his shoulders, waving and blowing kisses to the crowd.
It wasn't just her presence on the floor that charmed fans. Raducan, who turns 17 on Saturday, has a wonderful, childlike naivete. When she came into the news conference after winning the all-around, she perched at the edge of Olaru's chair instead of taking the seat reserved for her at the middle of the table.
Told the place of honor was hers, the gold medalist said she thought it was for her coach.
"It's like having a dream, a nice dream," Raducan said then. "I still feel like I'm in this dream."
That feeling didn't last long.
All medalists are tested for drugs, and Raducan's sample after the all-around came back positive. The level of drug in her urine was 90 nanograms per milliliter, more than three times greater than the 24 nanograms per milliliter allowed by the IOC.
She also was tested after winning a silver in the vault Sunday. That sample was negative. She was not tested after the team competition Sept. 19.
Whether the doctor, Ioachim Oana, knew he'd prescribed something that included a banned substance isn't certain. The Romanians aren't talking.
But when Oana filled out the form detailing medications Raducan was taking, he included the cold medicine.
Raducan is the fourth athlete to be stripped of a medal because of drugs. Three Bulgarian weightlifters lost their medals, including Izabela Dragneva, the gold medalist in the women's 105-pound event.