Cycling: The Olympic time-trial champion Tyler Hamilton faces the possible loss of his gold medal depending on the outcome of a second sample analysis after confirmation yesterday that he had failed a test intended to detect the use of blood transfusions to boost performance.
The analysis of B samples from the tests is awaited today. If Hamilton were to be confirmed positive, he would be the first athlete in sport to be found using blood transfusions, when blood from a donor is injected to increase the amount of oxygen-carrying red cells.
The 33-year-old from Marblehead, Massachussets, yesterday denied any use of illicit practices, and vowed to contest the ruling.
"I am 100 per cent innocent," he said, adding that he "would fight this until I don't have a euro left in my pocket".
A spokesman for the American's Phonak team, Georges Luedinger, said that the team had been informed by cycling's governing body, the International Cycling Union, that samples given by Hamilton were abnormal.
The cyclist has apparently provided two positive A samples, one from the Olympics and one from the Tour of Spain. Hamilton took an emotional victory in the Vuelta's time-trial stage on September 11th, but quit the race six days later complaining of stomach problems.
According to Luedinger, the UCI claims the sample showed, "the presence of a mixed red blood cell population, indication of a homologous blood transfusion", in other words blood from another person. If confirmed, the implication is that Hamilton may have received a transfusion of blood from a donor.
Hamilton's team yesterday pleaded for patience. "He told us he did nothing," said Luedinger. "I believe his word," said the team director Alvaro Pino. "He is an intelligent boy who would not take the risk of using a transfusion. We have the result of the analysis, but it is not definitive."
The gold medal would then pass to the silver medallist Viatcheslav Ekimov of Russia, the champion at the discipline four years ago in Sydney.
The silver would go to another American, Bobby Julich, with Michael Rogers of Australia stepping into the bronze medal position.
Hamilton's career has blossomed since he left the US Postal Service team of the six-times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, for whom he was a trusted team worker. He failed to finish this year's Tour de France, after injuring his shoulder, but he won many hearts with his courageous fight to finish fourth in the 2003 Tour de France in spite of a fractured collarbone.
His three-week fight against the pain, and his dramatic victory in a tough Pyrenean mountain stage, were captured in an Imax film, Brainpower, which is due for release next spring.
Whether Hamilton emerges as hero or villain from this latest episode remains to be seen.
Guardian Service
Prosecutors in Milan demanded yesterday that an Italian sports doctor should be jailed for 14 months for doping offences.
Public prosecutor Lorenzo Gestri asked for Michele Ferrari to be given a 14-month sentence, a 900 euro fine and a one-year ban from medical activity.
The doctor, who has worked with six times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, has denied the charges and said he was being made a "scapegoat" for the drug problems in cycling.
Ferrari, a former university researcher, is accused of doping riders during the past 10 years and of receiving banned drugs from a pharmacy in Bologna.
The trial in a Bologna court began in December 2001.
