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Up to 31 athletes face bans after International Olympic Committee retests Beijing samples
Up to 31 athletes from six sports could be banned from competing at the Rio Games, Olympic chiefs have said.
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The IOC said it could not provide any further information on which athletes have failed the tests or which countries they come from for legal reasons.
The IOC retains samples for up to 10 years to allow for the most up-to-date testing.
The executive board said it noted the response from the Japanese Olympic Committee and the former head of the Tokyo 2020 bidding committee to those reports and it would “continue to work to shed full light into the issue”.
In response to potentially devastating allegations of widespread doping among athletes at the 2014 Sochi Games, the International Olympic Committee has rolled out a series of re-tests of athlete samples from prior games.
The re-tests, a regular procedure by the IOC as it looks to re-test using newer methods or looking for new substances, were carried out in conjunction with the World Anti-Doping Agency ( WADA ) and worldwide federations.
It also revealed it is awaiting the results of 250 retests from the 2012 Olympics in London. Athletes who have broken anti-doping rules will be banned from competing at the Olympics in Rio.
The IOC is also retesting results from medal winners in Beijing and London, and in the event one of those athletes is stripped of their medal, the runner-up who takes their spot will also face retesting. Samples of athletes who could be promoted to medals following disqualification of drug cheats will also be retested. “We keep samples for ten years so that the cheats know that they can never rest”. Five athletes were caught, including 1,500-meter gold medalist Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain.
A report in the New York Times last week detailed a state-sponsored doping program run out of a Moscow laboratory during the 2014 Sochi Olympics, which involved switching out urine samples to ensure that athletes would have clean tests.
French investigators last week said that 2.8m Singapore dollars (£1.4m) was apparently transferred from Japan to the Singapore account of a company tied to the son of former International Association of Athletics Federations President Lamine Diack, who is facing corruption charges.
“Based on this investigation, the International Olympic Committee will take swift action”, it said.
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Tokyo bid leaders acknowledged the payments were made, but said they were for legitimate consulting fees.