In a mid-day conference call on Wednesday from Switzerland, IOC president Thomas Bach gave a timetable for the release of more information regarding the announcement of 31 athletes who have been caught in a sample re-testing from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
While the IOC has thus far kept the identities of the athletes (including their sports and nationalities) under wraps while those athletes are notified, Bach says that ‘early June’ will be the target date for making that information public.
Out of 454 samples from the 2008 Olympic Games, which were selected specifically based on levels of success, 31 came back positive using new testing methods not available in 2008. According to WADA rules, the IOC had 8 years to re-test the samples from the 2008 Olympic Games, making this the last opportunity to sanction these athletes.
Bach also emphasized that medals would not be automatically reallocated from Beijing if any medalists were stripped of their results, and that anyone who would inherit such a medal would expect to have their sample reanalyzed as well before being named to the podium.
“Protecting clean athletes is a top priority of the IOC,” Bach said. “(We have a) zero tolerance of the doping cheats and their entourage.”
The 2016 Summer Olympic Games will be held from August 5th through August 21st in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Listen to the full conference call below.
Or possibly they are allowing for a limited time for the accused to respond / appeal, which seems futile…but it does afford a due process. This will be very ugly so close to the Rio games, especially if some of the outed athletes are still active.
Not sure why the wait…..out the scum.
They want time to test those just below those caught in this wave so no medals get redistributed more than once. It happened in XC Skiing when Beckie Scott finished 3rd at the games. She was later given the silver after on positive test and later the gold a year or two later. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beckie_Scott