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US relay runners win Olympic medals appeal

Photo

Photo by AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau, File

This Sept. 30, 2000, file photo shows members of the U.S. women's 4X400 relay team, from left, Jearl Miles-Clark, Monique Hennagan, La Tasha Colander-Richardson (now Colander Clark) , and Marion Jones displaying their gold medals during award ceremonies at the Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. American sprinters who were stripped of their 2000 Olympics relay medals because teammate Marion Jones was doping have won an appeal to have them restored. The Court of Arbitration for Sport on Friday, July 16, 2010, ruled in favor of the women, who appealed the International Olympic Committee's decision to disqualify them from the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND — American sprinters who were stripped of their 2000 Olympics relay medals because teammate Marion Jones was doping won an appeal Friday to have them restored.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled in favor of the women, who had appealed the International Olympic Committee's decision to disqualify them from the Sydney Games.

The court said that rules in place in 2000 did not allow entire teams to be disqualified because of doping by one athlete.

In Sydney, Jearl Miles-Clark, Monique Hennagan, LaTasha Colander Clark and Andrea Anderson were part of the squad that won gold in the 4x400 relay. Chryste Gaines, Torri Edwards, Nanceen Perry and Passion Richardson were on the 4x100 bronze medal squad.

All but Perry joined the appeal.

In 2007, Jones admitted she was doping in Sydney and also lost her individual golds in the 100 and 200 meters and bronze in the long jump.

"The panel found that at the time of the Sydney Olympic Games there was no express IOC or IAAF rule in force that clearly allowed the IOC to annul the relay team results if one team member was found to have committed a doping offense," CAS said.

The CAS panel of three lawyers acknowledged that the ruling might be unfair to relay teams that competed "with no doped athletes helping their performance," but the decision "exclusively depends on the rules enacted or not enacted by the IOC and the IAAF at the time of the Sydney Olympic Games."

The IOC has now lost two rulings at the Court of Arbitration for Sport within five weeks involving Olympic medals stripped in doping cases.

Belarus hammer throwers Vadim Devyatovskiy and Ivan Tsikhan won their appeals against disqualification from the 2008 Beijing Games and regained their silver and bronze medals, respectively.