Star athletes accused of doping

Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson (center) was stripped of his 100 meter gold medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics when he tested positive for stanozolol. He admitted having used steroids when he ran his 1987 world record, so that was rescinded too. His main rival, US athlete Carl Lewis (right), tested positive in1988, but successfully blamed the traces of banned stimulants on cold medication.

US track and field world champion and Olympic gold medalist Marion Jones forfeited all prizes dating back to 2000, admitting in 2007 that she’d been doping that far back. She confessed to lying about it to a grand jury investigating performance-enhancer creations by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO), which supplied more than 20 top athletes, and was sentenced to six months in jail.

The German sprint star and world champion in 1991 for the 100 and 200 meter distance tested positive for clenbuterol in 1995. A comeback attempt failed.

Dieter Baumann, German 5000-meter Olympics champion of 1992, later tested positive for Nandrolone and was banned for two years in 1999, causing him to miss the 2000 Sydney Olympics. He argued that someone had contaminated his toothpaste. He came back in 2002, at the age of 37, to win silver over 10,000 meters at the European Championships in Munich.

Ekaterini Thanou and her training partner Konstantinos Kenteris failed to attend a drugs test on the eve of the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics. Later that day they were hospitalized, claiming they’d had a motorcycle accident. They withdrew from the Games, and investigators ruled the accident had been staged and they were criminally charged with making false statements to authorities.

The most high-profile case in professional cycling: The US Anti-Doping Agency in 2012 found Lance Armstrong guilty of using performance enhancing drugs, stripped the seven-time Tour de France winner of his titles and banned him for life. In January 2013, Armstrong told US television personality, Oprah Winfrey, how he lied without detection for years between 1998 and 2004.

Argentine football legend Diego Maradona tested positive for Ephedrine at the soccer World Cup in the US in 1994 and was excluded from the tournament. Three years earlier he had been found to have taken cocaine.

Claudia Pechstein is the most successful Olympic speed skater, ever. In 2009, she was accused of blood doping and banned from all competitions for two years. She claimed an inherited condition was the reason for irregular levels of reticulocytes but failed to win a long legal battle. She returned to competition in 2011, winning bronze in the 5000 meter event at that year’s World Championships.

Russia’s Svetlana Krivelyova won shot put gold at the 1992 Olympics and the World Championship in 2003. At the 2004 World Indoor Championships she was awarded gold after the winner was stripped of her title for failing a drugs test. In Athens, 2004, she won bronze only after the winner was disqualified for doping. A re-test then found drugs in Krivelyova’s, and the medal was rescinded.

South African long-distance runner Gert Thys entered World Championships and Olympic Games. He won the 2006 Seoul International Marathon but was disqualified after testing positive for the steroid Norandrosterone. Thys contested the ban, pointing to laboratory errors: the same technician had analyzed both his samples, a breach of testing rules. In 2012 he was exonerated.

Jamaican former 100-meter world record holder Asafa Powell, his teammate, three-time Olympic medalist Sherone Simpson, US American sprinters Tyson Gay and Veronica Campbell-Brown all failed doping tests this summer. Powell was one of the world’s most-tested athletes in the run-up to the London 2012 Summer Olympics. He is exploring legal options.