By
The Associated Press
SYDNEY, Australia - Top gymnast Andreea Raducan of Romania could lose her all-around gold medal after a positive drug test, which a Romanian official says resulted from two cold medication pills given to her by a doctor.
IOC drug chief Prince Alexandre de Merode said the IOC medical commission would recommend the 16-year-old Raducan lose her all-around medal, but be allowed to keep her team gold and vault silver.
"We consider it was not a voluntary action. It was given to her by the medical doctor," de Merode said late yesterday after Raducan and a large Romanian delegation met with the IOC medical panel for about three hours.
De Merode said the panel also would recommend that the team doctor be banned from the Sydney, Salt Lake City and Athens Olympics.
The commission was expected to report to the IOC executive board later yesterday night.
Raducan's dark eyes and pint-sized frame have earned her comparisons to Nadia Comaneci, who at the Montreal Olympics in 1976 became the first gymnast to score a perfect 10. In Sydney, Raducan became the first Romanian to win the all-around title since Comaneci in 1976.
Romanian Olympic Committee president Ion Tiriac said Raducan had taken two cold medicine pills, one containing pseudoephedrine and the second an over-the-counter drug.
"We believe this case is completely irrelevant," Tiriac said. "The athlete is the best gymnast in the world at this time - she has proved it."
Tiriac said Romanian officials were told yesterday afternoon of the positive test, but Raducan competed anyway in the individual floor exercise final that night and finished seventh out of eight.
Tiriac said pseudoephedrine is "not at all on the (banned drug) list of the international gymnastics federation but is on the list of the IOC" and had been taken by other athletes. The drug, he said, "is a medicine that is not enhancing but diminishing performance."
Raducan's petiteness - 4-foot-10, 82 pounds - contributed to the positive test, he said. He didn't say when she took the medication.
Team coach Octavian Belu threatened to withdraw the whole team from the games, the private Romanian news agency Mediafax reported. He did not attend news conferences following Monday's competition.
"Andreea Raducan is an innocent child. She is not capable of such a thing as doping," Dana Encutescu, federal secretary of the Romanian Gymnastic Association, told Romanian media.
Mediafax said Raducan was found positive for a derivative of ephedrine, resulted from nurofren, in amounts of 90 micrograms per milliliter following the Sunday competition in which she won a silver medal in the vault. The normal concentration is 25 micrograms per milliliter, the agency said.
The result of the first drug test on Friday was negative, Mediafax said.
Romania won the team gold on Tuesday and Raducan took the all-around title Thursday.
