MONTE CARLO, Monaco (AP):
THE UNITED States has been stripped of its 1,600 relay gold medal from the 2003 World Championships after Calvin Harrison's second doping violation, the world governing body of athletics said yesterday.
The gold instead goes to France with Jamaica taking the silver and the Bahamas collecting bronze.
Harrison was found guilty of using the stimulant modafinil at the U.S. championships in June 2003. That was 10 years after he tested positive for another stimulant, pseudoephedrine, during the 1993 U.S. junior indoor championships and served a three-month ban.
TWO YEARS SUSPENSION
As a two-time offender, the 400-metre star was suspended for two years in early August this year and dropped from the American team for the Athens Olympics.
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency also ordered him to forfeit his relay gold medal from last year's Worlds in Paris and all his results from the time of the test have been nullified.
Harrison, who had argued that modafinil wasn't specifically named on the official list of banned substances in 2003, had the chance to appeal against the ruling. According to the International Association of Athletics Federations, he's now too late.
"The deadline has passed and that means there is a new result in the relay final," IAAF spokesman Nick Davies said yesterday. "France is now the winner, Jamaica, second, and the Bahamas, third."
Harrison ran the opening leg of the relay final and that means the other three runners Tyree Washington, Derrick Brew and Jerome Young will lose their gold medals too.
Instead, they will go to French runners Leslie Djhone, Naman Keita, Stephane Diagana and Marc Raquil.
The Jamaican team members who ran in the final are Brandon Simpson, Danny McFarlane, Davian Clarke and anchor Michael Blackwood.
By coincidence, Young has since been banned for life by the USADA for his second doping violation in a case that could mean the American 1,600m relay team from the 2000 Sydney Olympics including Michael Johnson losing their gold medals. The Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland, is yet to rule on that case.
