Drug Tests on 16 Athletes Suspicious

ROME (Reuter) - Sixteen athletes returned suspicious urine samples at this year's Atlanta Olympics although only two were banned for doping, International Olympic Committee medical chief Prince Alexandre de Merode said Wednesday.

Bulgarian women's triple jumper Iva Prandzheva and Russian women's high hurdler Natalya Shekodanova were both banned after testing positive for steroids at the Games.

De Merode told a news conference that another two cases were "discussed and abandoned," seven cases involving bromantan were rejected on "juridical grounds" and another five steroid cases were rejected because of technical doubts. Bromantan will be banned by from February next year after the IOC ruled it was a stimulant and masking agent.

The IOC vice-president said because of technical advances made since the Games, he was confident that all 16 samples would now fail dope tests if carried out under similar circumstances in a few months time.

IOC medical director Patrick Schamash said this month that four Olympic athletes could face bans if the IOC decided to retest their urine samples from Atlanta.

He said the quartet had tested positive for anabolic steroids but the IOC had not been satisfied about the reliability of the testing procedures conducted on a high resolution mass spectrometer, used for the first time at an Olympics.

De Merode said that there were in fact such five cases but the IOC had decided that the samples would be used for research purposes and would not therefore be retested.

"The five cases are now closed," he said.