Topic: News:Failed doping appeals rule two lifters out of Melbourne

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Failed doping appeals rule two lifters out of Melbourne

TWO Australian female weightlifters who were due to compete at the Commonwealth Games have failed with appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport over use of the stimulant benzylpiperazine, it was announced yesterday.

Camilla Fogagnolo and Jenna Myers are now ineligible. So, too, are male lifters Sergo Chakhoyan and Corran Hocking, who tested positive for the same drug last year. Their appeal hearings have been delayed until March 30, so neither can compete in Melbourne.

The Australian Weightlifting Federation had been expected to announce their squad in December, but were unable to do so because of the hearings.

England are in a similar position. Four of their lifters are under investigation, having failed tests last summer. The team must be named by a week on Wednesday. Steve Cannon, chief executive of the British Weightlifters Association, is anxious that due process runs its course, but said there is little chance of investigations being concluded in time to resolve the eligibility of the four by March 15.

An alternative (and therefore substantially weaker) team would be named, with the country's four best lifters ineligible for Melbourne. They all failed tests at the Commonwealth trials and are attempting to prove that elevated male hormone levels occurred naturally.

BWLA are being cautious because they have been threatened with legal action in the past over alleged breaches of confidentiality.

One of their members, Christine Johnson, was revealed in the UK Sport doping audit on Thursday to have been banned for two years for a second cannabis offence. There is no mention of the four other positives, exclusively revealed last year by The Herald, and BWLA have thus far declined to name those under investigation.

The UKS audit, which shows out-of-competition tests to have reached 49.5-per cent of their annual total, is thus painting an artificial picture of the current state of sport in Britain. They decline to log any cases until a competitor is processed by their governing body. In the past, threats of litigation have successfully gagged some sports.

British weightlifting finances already face meltdown, with powerlifting recently threatening a complete breakaway.

The World Anti-Doping Agency claimed yesterday that French scientists have discovered a way to detect genetic blood doping, the practice of which was publicly revealed for the first time just 24 hours earlier at the trial in a Magdeburg court of sprint coach Thomas Springstein.

The German was banned for his role in coaching the drug-tainted former world champions Silke Moller and Katrin Krabbe. In a raid on his house, e-mails were found referring to a drug normally used in gene therapy.

French National Doping Laboratory research published in the journal of the American Society of Gene Therapy states that the hormone produced artificially is not the same as that produced naturally.

WADA have appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to block the Olympic eligibility of skeleton racer Zach Lund, who tested positive for a banned steroid-masking agent in November, but has escaped with a warning from his US governing body.

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Drugs Suspicions Mar Games Opening
Reporter: Tom Iggulden
 
TONY JONES: The Commonwealth Games have suffered a setback on the night of its Opening Ceremony - a potential drugs scandal at the host country's most prestigious sporting facility. Tom Iggulden reports the discovery of syringes and suspicious substances at the Australian Institute of Sport is threatening to overshadow the Games before competition even gets under way.

TOM IGGULDEN: The Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra has tonight confirmed it's calling in independent investigators to look into suspicious material found in an athlete's room. It's understood cleaners found syringes and vials in a room used by members of a weightlifting training camp. The AIS says the material has been sent to an anti-doping agency for testing but is otherwise not confirming details of the case. But some are already comparing it to other recent drug scandals, like the Mark French case.

DR ROBIN PARISOTTO, AUTHOR, BLOODSPORTS: We cast our mind back to, you know, the Mark French case, where vials and paraphernalia was also found in a room at the Institute of Sport in Adelaide.

TOM IGGULDEN: A cyclist on the Athens Olympic team, French was banned for life a month before the Games after the syringes and empty vials were found in his room. Claiming he thought he was injecting legal vitamins, French eventually had his ban overturned after a lengthy court battle. There's already a cloud over the Australian Commonwealth Games weightlifting team. Nineteen-year-old Belinda Van Tienen has been accused of supplying two other lifters with a banned stimulant. They were banned but Van Tienen's been allowed to compete in the Games, while the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Agency determines whether there's a case for her to answer. The latest developing scandal has some wondering whether Australia needs to follow the lead of other countries' anti-doping efforts.

DR ROBIN PARISOTTO: I mean, Italy was probably one of the first countries to, in a sense, outlaw doping and it's become a civil offence. And, so, I guess, in that light, police have powers to, you know, stop and search suspects for doping drugs as they would for recreation drugs.

TOM IGGULDEN: Dr Parisotto thinks the news is an embarrassment on the eve of such a high-profile event.

DR ROBIN PARISOTTO: Probably more disturbing is the fact that these things are being found by, you know, cleaners instead of being detected in drug tests.

TOM IGGULDEN: The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority told Lateline tonight it wouldn't comment on operational matters. Tom Iggulden, Lateline.

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Suspicious kits linked to Aussie weightlifters

Unidentified pills were found along with syringes and vials in Australian athletes' rooms at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), a government minister said Thursday.

Sports Minister Rod Kemp said the pills were found after an AIS cleaner discovered the vials and syringes in rooms which had been occupied by members of Australia's Commonwealth Games weightlifting team.

The discovery was made in AIS rooms in Canberra when the team were at the Games village in Melbourne.

"I think the substances were initially found by cleaners, then there was a forensic team brought in to go over rooms," Kemp said.

"Then on Wednesday, after the forensic team had gone through the rooms, a further number of tablets were found and of course they're being tested as well," he said. "The rooms that were involved, I'm advised, were occupied by members of the ... Australian weightlifting team, but we will have to wait and see on the outcome of the investigations before we can make any further comments on that."

News of the potentially embarrassing discovery broke just as Queen Elizabeth declared the 18th Commonwealth Games Open.

Australian team chef de mission John Devitt warned against directly linking Australia's weightlifters to the discovery until after the results of the tests were known.

"It would be unfair to the competitors to start identifying them, zeroing in and saying these things are happening, until we get told what were the ingredients to make the investigation so far," Devitt said.

The AIS is a world-renowned training base used by athletes from around the world as well as from Australia.

"There were other teams in the institute while (the weightlifters) were there," Devitt said.

"I don't know who, but they were there at the same time," he said.

Meanwhile, fuming Australian swimming officials dismissed suggestions that doping was rife in the sport, calling the claims ridiculous.

Former Olympic long jumper Gary Honey was quoted by Australian media as saying performance-enhancing drugs were so common in endurance sports such as athletics and cycling that he could not believe swimming was completely clean.

He stopped short of actually accusing the national team of taking performance-enhancing drugs, but the comments ruffled feathers in the Australian swimming camp.

"I have absolute confidence in our swim team and in our sport that we are drug free," the team's head coach Alan Thompson said.

Honey, a silver medalist at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, said he felt drugs were a much bigger issue in swimming than officials let on.

"I think anyone who believes that any sport is drug free is naive and almost stupid," he said.

Swimming Australia chief executive Glenn Tasker said the claims were ludicrous.

"Swimming Australia and our athletes have for years led the fight against doping and continue to do so," he said.

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Tests negative in weightlifting doping inquiry
By Louise Yaxley

MARK COLVIN: Tests on syringes, tablets and vials found at the Institute of Sport in Canberra this week show no traces of performance-enhancing substances.

But despite the negative test there will be a wide-ranging inquiry into the sport of weightlifting in Australia.

The newly-created Sports Anti-Doping Authority is using its powers to examine allegations about the abuse of performance-enhancing substances and trafficking in them.

It will also look into the case of Belinda van Tienen who is alleged to have trafficked in performance-enhancing substances.

But the Sports Anti-Doping Authority says it's not planning to bring any charges against her at this stage, so she will be allowed to compete in the Commonwealth Games.

Louise Yaxley joins us now from the Games.

Louise, the materials found this week at the AIS (Australian Institute of Sport) don't seem to have been performance-enhancing drugs or substances, so is the team cleared now?

LOUISE YAXLEY: Mark it's not in that while these lab tests show no traces of performance-enhancing substances, the team still has to explain why syringes and vials were found in those rooms.

It is an Institute of Sport rule that no injections are allowed without medical supervision. It appears that the substances were vitamins, so they're not illegal.

But the injection of vitamins is against the AIS rules, and rather than it being an issue of banned substances, it's simply another action by the weightlifting team creating a cloud over the sport.

The Sports Anti-Doping Authority Chairman, Richard Ings has announced this wider inquiry into the sport.

When this new body was set up this week it received the file of existing drug matters in weightlifting and instantly, this inquiry's been set up, Mr Ings told me he's concerned about the sport's record.

RICHARD INGS: Well we do know that there have been two athletes in the sport of weightlifting in recent months who've been suspended for two years for use of the stimulant BZP (benzylpiperazine). There are a further two athletes in the sport of weightlifting who've returned analytical positives for BZP who are awaiting their hearings before the court of arbitration for sport.

We have a further allegation into trafficking by other members in the sport of weightlifting. Given the totality of that information and the report that I received on Tuesday when we opened the doors of ASADA (Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority), there are questions to be answered and this commission of inquiry has been established to provide those answers.

MARK COLVIN: That's the Sports Anti-Doping Authority Chairman Richard Ings.

Well Louise Yaxley, the Tasmanian weightlifter, Belinda van Tienen, what's her future now? She was in danger of being banned from the Games.

LOUISE YAXLEY: Yes, she will be able to compete in the Games. But ASADA, the Sports Anti-Doping Authority says the matter remains open in her case, so it hasn't cleared her, it's simply said that it's not planning to bring any charge of an anti-doping violation against her at the moment and so there's nothing to prevent her competing in the Games.

So we will see her weightlifting, but it will be to an extent an embarrassment for the sport, because she'll be someone still with this hanging over her head.

MARK COLVIN: And what about weightlifting in general?

LOUISE YAXLEY: This seems to be very much an attempt to clean up the sport. Earlier today the Sports Minister, Rod Kemp, declined to offer his full confidence in weightlifting and as Richard Ings has outlined, there are concerns about the sport and so this powerful investigation is aimed at flushing out everything that is potentially wrong with the sport, particularly of course the use of banned substances.

There have also been government monies withheld from weightlifting because of the poor financial record-keeping. That won't be included in this because it's an ASADA investigation, but this is aimed at cleaning up the sport.

Mr Ings says he hopes it can start quickly and finish quickly and I understand Mark that there are hopes within the sporting community generally, that this can flush out any problems and help to bring weightlifting's reputation back from the point which it, at the moment, has a very big cloud over it.

MARK COLVIN: Thanks Louise. That's Louise Yaxley on the line from the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne there.

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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BALCO Man Takes on Australian Weightlifting
By Jacquelin Magnay

The surprise investigation into the entire sport of weightlifting in Australia, announced in the midst of the Commonwealth Games yesterday, will be headed by one of the leading international anti-doping prosecutors, American Richard Young.

Young rose to international prominence when he investigated the infamous BALCO case in the United States.

The announcement was a major embarrassment for Games vice-chairman and Australian Weightlifting president Sam Coffa, who described the timing of the inquiry - it is due to start early next week - as "absolutely shocking". Coffa blamed the media for "the utterly disgusting way the sport is being presented" but said he would co-operate with the investigation.

"It is an ongoing process which we have agreed and which we are co-operating with," he said. "There are incidents we are not happy with but there are proper ways of dealing with it."

Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority chairman Richard Ings ordered the far-reaching inquiry into "any and all allegations of anti-doping rules violations linked to Australian weightlifting". Ings said the terms of reference would provide a breadth of opportunity for Young, who was also one of the key draftees of the World Anti-Doping Agency code, to fully examine any aspect and any issue in weightlifting.

This comes despite the release of results of the testing of suspicious material found last Tuesday in AIS rooms occupied by Australian weightlifters in a pre-Games camp. Coffa said everyone had jumped the gun in believing the worst of the sport when the tablets and vials were found to be teeth-whitening products and vitamins. He said the syringes were bottles that "resembled syringes".

The sport is also under attack from the Australian Sports Commission, which has withheld nearly $200,000 in funding because of financial and governance issues. The AWF failed to file any financial statements at its annual general meeting last year and at least three states have been calling for an inquiry into the money situation.

Young's brief will involve looking into the controversial trafficking allegations against Games lifter Belinda Van Tienen, who was yesterday deemed by ASADA to have no case to answer "at the present time".

"While no charge is pending against Ms Van Tienen there is nothing to preclude her from competing in the Common- wealth Games," Ings said.

But central to the inquiry will be Van Tienen's housemate, convicted steroid trafficker and Melbourne weightlifter Keith Murphy. Murphy's company, Fortius, has been selling supplements to the weightlifting community, including to the two Tasmanian weightlifters, Camilla Fogagnolo and Jenna Myers, who were banned for testing positive earlier this year. Another two lifters, including Van Tienen's boyfriend Corran Hocking, who also lives in the same house as Murphy, and another top lifter, Sergo Chakhoyan, are facing drugs hearings later this month.

Coffa was asked yesterday whether his sport was clean and replied: "Naturally, unless such time as it is proved otherwise."

Young's appointment underscores the heavyweight approach being taken by ASADA. Young previously headed the prosecution in the BALCO case in the United States which involved 100m world champion Tim Montgomery and the Sydney Olympic Games star Marion Jones.

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Officials Gag Weightlifter Ben Turner Over Drug Questions
By Rick Wallace and Brendan Cormick

WITH weightlifting at the centre of a new doping scandal, team officials refused to allow Australia's gold medal hero Ben Turner, who won the 69kg class, to answer questions about drug use in the sport.

Team bosses interrupted a press conference yesterday labelling a question put to Turner about drug use "not fair" and soon after abruptly ended the conference.

The intervention came as allegations of drug abuse within the sport were being investigated by the nation's powerful new anti-doping body after it emerged that four Australian lifters had tested positive to banned stimulants in recent months.

It also followed the announcement of the shock withdrawal on medical grounds yesterday of weightlifter Belinda van Tienen, who was approved last week to lift in the Games despite accusations she had sold banned stimulants to other lifters.

Turner, who won gold on Saturday night despite needing pain-killing injections in both knees, was answering a question on whether his sport was clean before the team bosses' surprise intervention.

"I can't speak for others, but all of us, I think, try to do the right thing. Personally, I check everything I put in my mouth with (anti-doping body) ASADA so that's all we can do," Turner said.

A reporter followed up Turner's answer by asking: "You are being quite reluctant to be adamant about it -- is that because you know stuff?"

Team officials John Devitt and Perry Crosswhite and media manager John Gatfield immediately stepped in, saying: "That's not fair. He's said what he said. He can only speak for himself." Minutes later they ended the press conference and whisked the lifters away.

Earlier, bronze medallist Natasha Barker had backed comments from Turner that the inquiry into the drug allegations was a waste of time.

"We've got nothing to hide," Barker said. "We feel we've done nothing wrong. So, welcome, come in, we are there to be tested, we are there to be investigated.

"We are innocent so waste your money if you want to."

Asked if the sport was drug-free, Barker replied: "As free as any sport. I think weightlifting gets targeted. I am confident our team now, here, is free and innocent and has done nothing wrong and we are frustrated we get so much attention over all this hype."

Barker pointed out it was not just weightlifting that had drug issues to contend with, highlighting the recent recreational drug problem among the Australian football players.

"It happens in other sports. I think we got more coverage than the AFL guys did," Barker said.

"I would like to say I'm disappointed with the negative press. We kind of feel we only get press when it is bad press. It is frustrating because we try so hard, weightlifting is a low profile sport and sponsorship is hard to get."

Young lifter Joel Wilson was another to speak out on the drugs issue after finishing fifth to Turner on Saturday night.

"To be honest, I think it is very unfair on the sport," Wilson said. "I'm proud to be a weightlifter, proud to be an Aussie and I'm clean."

The Australian team's medical chief Peter Fricker said authorities had advised van Tienen to withdraw because of concerns over a fracture in one of her ribs.

Mr Devitt said her withdrawal was not related to the trafficking allegations, which remain under investigation by the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority. "In this case it's strictly medical, no other area of discussion came into it," Devitt said. "She is disappointed, but prepared to accept the medical advice."

ASADA chairman Richard Ings ordered a wide-ranging inquiry into weightlifting last Friday despite finding that materials found in weightlifters' rooms at the Australian Institute of Sport last week were vitamins rather than banned drugs.

Ings said the inquiry was needed after the recent positive tests to the banned stimulant BZP and allegations of drug use.

Van Tienen was not available for comment yesterday, but she is expected to remain at the athletes' village for the rest of the Games.

Barker, who has now retired from lifting despite winning bronze on Saturday, said the team was supporting van Tienen. "We feel for what she's been through," she said.

Two Indian lifters were withdrawn from the Games after testing positive to banned substances.

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Tests Corner Australian Weightlifting Elites
By SIMON BEVILACQUA

DUAL Olympian Ron Laycock is the highest-profile Tasmanian weightlifter to test positive to performance-enhancing drugs.

A Commonwealth Games gold medallist, Laycock tested positive to the anabolic steroid stanozolol at the world weightlifting championships in Melbourne in November 1993.

Laycock, who attended the Australian Institute of Sport in the 1980s, denied having knowingly taken the drug.

Fellow AIS lifter Paul Harrison said he had spiked Laycock's drink in anger over an unpaid loan of $3000.

Laycock's Tasmanian teammate Jarrod Leslie also tested positive to stanozolol in 1993.

Tasmanian lifters Paul Clark and Tony Hills confessed to having taken steroids when in 1990 they addressed the Senate committee conducting the Drugs in Sport inquiry.

Clark and Hills were among a roll-call of lifters who, under parliamentary privilege, said steroids were a regular part of weightlifting training at the AIS in Canberra.

Clark told the inquiry he brought "suitcases" of steroids from overseas into Australia.

Before last month's Melbourne Commonwealth Games, Tasmanian lifters Jenna Myers and Camilla Fogagnolo were banned after testing positive to the stimulant benzylpiperazine (BZP).

Myers and Fogagnolo say they unwittingly took the banned stimulant, which is commonly found in soft drinks in New Zealand.

Victorian lifter Corran Hocking tested positive to BZP last year at the Oceania and Commonwealth championships in Melbourne.

He also tested positive at the Australian championships in 2003.

Australia's only male weightlifter at the Athens Olympics, Sergo Chakhoyan, also tested positive to BZP last year.

He had tested positive for steroid use in 2001, completing a two-year ban. In 2004 the Australian Olympic committee said Chakhoyan went into hiding 3-1/2 months before being drug-tested in Armenia.

In the same year, Commonwealth Games gold medallist Caroline Pileggi fled drug testers visiting the Fiji gym where she was training.

The West Australian was dumped from the Athens team and banned for two years for refusing the test.

In 1998 the Australian Sports Commission was so concerned about consistent positive drug tests it threatened to withdraw funding for weightlifting.

The Australian team went to the world championships in Lahti in that year without three of its best lifters because they had tested positive to steroids.

About half of all doping offences since 1991 have involved Victorian lifters.

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Sport Needs A Big Lift, Say Top Aussie Insiders
By Simon Bevilacqua

ONE of Australia's biggest weightlifting supporters has a radical plan for the maligned sport.

Ron Nylander, former executive director of the Australian Weightlifting Federation, says his sport is in tatters.

"For 20 years the sport has been a mess," Mr Nylander said.

"I'd like to see the whole thing shut down and started again from scratch."

Mr Nylander said the stigma of performance-enhancing drugs was destroying the reputations of clean lifters.

"Many athletes are doing the right thing but they're being smeared by this innuendo because of positive drug tests," he said.

Mr Nylander, a life member of Weightlifting Tasmania, said internal AWF brawling had left a trail of disgruntled officials and athletes, many of whom had walked out of the sport in disgust.

He said he was sacked as AWF executive director in 1984 because he "tried to fix some of the problems".

"I was sacked because I was not a yes man," Mr Nylander said.

Two other former AWF executive directors, Michael Noonan and Robert Kabbas, had also lost their jobs because they had tried to "sort things out".

The disgruntled former AWF bosses say many athletes have left the sport because of the stigma and what they say is a lack of action to restore weightlifting's standing as one of the world's most respected sports.

"Participation in the sport has dropped dramatically, there's a lack of interest at the grassroots level," Mr Nylander said.

"Weightlifting is in a parlous state."

Mr Noonan, of Melbourne, was executive director between 1990 and 1993 before he was cast adrift.

"Officially my job was redesignated and I was invited to re-apply but of course I was knocked back," he said.

"Unofficially I was dumped because I tried to make some changes.

"My membership has been refused for the past decade, they won't give me a reason why."

Mr Kabbas, an Olympic silver medallist with a high profile in the sport, left the job as AWF executive director 18 months ago.

Kabbas recently founded Phoenix weightlifting club in Melbourne with two other disgruntled former lifters, Australian coach Martin Leach and former Commonwealth Games gold medallist Ivan Katz.

As the name suggests, the founders hope Australian weightlifting will rise from the ashes.

The sport is currently under the microscope.

An investigation by the new Australian Sports Anti-Doping Agency is being led by international sports drug prosecutor Richard Young.

The Australian Sports Commission is investigating AWF finances after some financial records were not tabled at an annual general meeting this year.

The commission has frozen AWF funding while it investigates.

AWF president Sam Coffa says the commission will find nothing of concern.

Mr Coffa is also Australian Commonwealth Games Association president and a member of the Melbourne Games organising committee.

He said Commonwealth Games commitments had caused administrative delays in the AWF.

Mr Nylander said many attempts to sort out problems in weightlifting had failed.

"We [former AWF executive directors Nylander, Noonan and Kabbas] were sacked for no reason other than we didn't agree with what was happening and wanted to do something about it," Mr Nylander said.

He still referees and coaches on the local Tasmanian scene.

He said he spent 14 years without AWF membership but had recently rejoined.

But he has no plans to rejoin the national fray.

"I won't work with the people in charge, I refuse to," he said.

Former Tasmanian weightlifting coach Leo Isaac has also walked away from the sport in disgust.

Mr Isaac, a former British Olympian, officially threw in the towel about 10 years ago.

"Anybody with any intelligence has been ostracised," Mr Isaac said.

"Unless you're prepared to be a yes man, your face doesn't fit."

Mr Isaac remains in touch with weightlifting circles in Queensland where he teaches sports administration at TAFE.