Four European athletes forfeit medals

LAUSANNE, SwitzErLANd — Eight years after winning Olympic medals in Athens, four track and field athletes from eastern Europe were ordered to hand them back Wednesday because of positive doping tests.

Lance Armstrong, meanwhile, can hold onto his bronze medal from the 2000 Sydney Games for a little while longer.

The International Olympic Committee executive board disqualified four athletes whose Athens doping samples were retested earlier this year and came back positive for steroids, including shot put gold medalist Yuriy Bilonog of Ukraine.

Also stripped were hammer throw silver medalist Ivan Tskikhan of Belarus and two bronze medalists - women’s shot putter Svetlana Krivelyova of Russia and discus thrower Irina Yatchenko of Belarus.

The case of a fifth bronze medalist, weightlifter Oleg Perepechenov of Russia, remains pending.

“Athletes who cheat by using doping substances must understand that just because they get away with it one day, there is a very good chance that they will be caught in the future,” WADA President John Fahey said in a statement. “The retesting and subsequent decisions of the IOC are proof of that.”

The IOC said it will ask the International Association of Athletics Federations to get the four medals back and readjust the results and rankings from the Athens Games.

Until then, no decision will be taken on reallocating the medals. Adam Nelson of the United States finished second in the shot put in Athens behind Bilonog and would stand to move up to gold.

The IOC, meanwhile, held off stripping Armstrong of the bronze he won 12 years ago in the cycling road time trial in Sydney, citing procedural reasons for the delay.

IOC leaders want the medal back following the damning U.S. Anti-Doping Agency report that painted Armstrong as a systematic drug cheat and led to him being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles from 19992005.

But the IOC said it must wait for cycling’s governing body UCI to formally notify Armstrong of the loss of all his results since August 1998. The IOC wants to avoid any legal problems in connection with the eight-year statute of limitations in the Olympic rules.

“The IOC today will not move,” IOC President Jacques Rogge said at a news conference.