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 Daily Independent Online.
* Wednesday, August 11, 2004.
Sydney medals row hots up
Nigeria waits as US gives notice of appeal
By
Peter Edema with agency reports
The U.S. sports authorities would
appeal against the stripping of Michael Johnson and other members of the
4x400m relay team of the gold medal won at the Sydney Olympics.
Nigeria,
silver medallist at the games
is hoping that the IOC would award the country the gold in the
event that the IOC strips the US of the medal at the Athens Olympics
starting tomorrow.
The head of
the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC), Jim Scherr, who disclosed this on
Tuesday, said it was not yet clear whether the USOC or the USA Track & Field would file
the appeal, but that an appeal would be filed against stripping other
members of the quartet of their medals.
The appeal
must get to the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport by September
18, 2004.
The squad
could lose its medals because of a doping violation by team member Jerome
Young a year before the 2000 Olympics. Young already has been stripped of
his medal, and the International Association of Athletics Federations
recommended last month that the entire team be penalised because Young
should have been ineligible.
The plank of
its appeal would be that Young, who was found guilty of dope offence did
not run the finals.
Young ran in
the opening and semi final rounds of the relay, but not in the final.
``We
definitely want to protect the medals for the rest of the relay team,''
Scherr said. ``Jerome ran in a preliminary, the contest was not decided
in that preliminary race. We think they earned those medals in the
final.''
When the IAAF
recommended last month that the entire team lose its medals, it allowed
60 days for appeal. Each of the squad members can now appeal to the Court
of Arbitration for Sport -- so can the USOC or USATF.
The
International Olympic Committee delayed making its own decision last
Saturday on whether to strip the quartet of the gold medals, saying it would wait until all appeals
have been exhausted.
Young tested
positive for the steroid nandrolone in 1999, but was exonerated in July
2000 by a U.S. appeals panel. USATF never gave the IAAF specifics about
the case.
USATF
officials said confidentiality rules prevented them from releasing
information about the Young case until his name became public last year.
Some IAAF officials accused the USATF of covering up the case.
If the U.S.
team loses its case, Nigeria will be upgraded to gold, Jamaica to silver
and the Bahamas to bronze. The U.S. Olympic Committee hasn't appealed,
and it was unclear whether any of the runners -- Johnson, twins Alvin and
Calvin Harrison, Antonio Pettigrew and Angelo Taylor -- had done so on
their own.
IOC
spokeswoman Giselle Davis said the executive board would wait until the
IAAF decision is ``final and enforceable'' before acting.
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