FIVE athletes whose urine tested positive for banned substances at this
year鈥檚 Olympic Games in Atlanta are to escape further investigation because of
doubts over the reliability of the sample handling procedures. The banned drugs
were spotted with the help of a $500 000 high-resolution mass
spectrometer brought in by the International Olympic Committee to improve drug
detection.
鈥淲e had some positive results, but because we had worries about how samples
had been extracted and prepared, we didn鈥檛 want to proceed with the cases,鈥� says
Patrick Schamasch, medical director of the IOC鈥檚 Medical Commission. The
decision not to pursue the cases means that only two athletes will have received
bans as a result of positive drug tests in Atlanta鈥擨va Prandzheva, a
Bulgarian triple-jumper, and Natalya Shekodanova, a Russian hurdler.
Schamasch defends the IOC鈥檚 decision to invest in the new machine. 鈥淲e were
100 per cent happy with the new technology,鈥� he says. The codes on the five
suspect samples that were not investigated further remain unbroken, says
Schamasch, so the athletes involved were not identified.
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