This 2003 file photo shows athlete Iryna Yatchenko of Belarus on the podium during the 2003 world championships. She was among four medalists from the 2004 Olympic games officially stripped of their Olympic medals for doping. (Franck Fife, AFP/Getty Images)
Four Olympic medalists at the 2004 Athens games lost their medals Wednesday as a result of retesting that showed they’d used steroids.
Cheating is cheating, and we’re glad the International Olympic Committee was able to root out those using performance enhancing drugs, even these many years later. The four all were field event athletes.
According to the New York Times, the athletes are: Yuriy Bilonog of Ukraine, who won a gold medal in the men’s shot put; Svetlana Krivelyova of Russia, who won bronze in the women’s shot put; Ivan Tsikhan of Belarus, who won silver in the men’s hammer throw; and Iryna Yatchenko of Belarus, who won bronze in the women’s discus.
Perhaps the threat that future tests could potentially detect doping techniques that are not discernible with current technology will discourage athletes from trying to get a chemical edge.
