The Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee issued sanctions Monday against the National Olympic Committee of Belarus after an athlete failed to show up for a doping test and later could not be found. Meanwhile, the country's chef de mission skipped a command-performance hearing with officials.
Although a lab found clear evidence of nandrolone in the unidentified Belarussian athlete's urine sample, the Salt Lake Games are still technically dope-free. And the reason's not making officials happy.
The doping control test won't count because the chain-of-custody requirements were broken when one of the bag's seals broke open after it was reported out of the lab as positive but before it reached its final destination. According to the Olympic Movement Anti-Doping Code, such breaches "cannot be characterized as minor irregularities."
Because of the problem, the IOC Executive Board couldn't take any action and instead ordered the athlete to show up for a new out-of-competition test Monday, said Francois Carrard, IOC director general. He (or she) stayed away.
The punishment for Belarus' NOC will be primarily financial. The NOC can't apply for or receive any grants or subsidies from the IOC or Olympic Solidarity until Dec. 31. Last year, it received about $120,000, according to Carrard.
The chef de mission, Yaroslav Barichko, will be excluded from the 2002 Winter Games, as well. During a briefing Monday evening, Carrard said that Barichko was "expressly invited for a hearing" and didn't attend, though he sent underlings.
The Belarus Olympic Committee knew the board couldn't take action because of the chain-of-custody problem. "By morning, the athlete had disappeared. The athlete had been in contact with (Barichko) seeking to leave the Games."
Carrard said officials don't believe the athlete has gone home, but they don't know. "Our impression is the athlete might not be so far from here." Should he return, it's unlikely another urine test would be ordered because too much time has passed. While the athlete would be allowed back into the Olympic Village, he could not participate in the Games, Carrard said.
The athlete's doping results would not have affected the outcome of any competition, the IOC said. The athlete had not qualified for finals.
Carrard said the IOC board purposely wanted to avoid leveling a sanction "that would have affected other Belarussian athletes in competition."
IOC Medical Director Dr. Patrick Schamasch described the broken seal as "really an inadvertent breach," the first such incident in more than 1,300 tests. And he noted that seven other samples have come back positive from the lab for doping, but all proved to be samples from athletes who had legitimate medical reasons for using a prohibited substance and the paperwork to prove it.
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