Drugs In Sport: Independent Survey - Jordanian is Games' first drugs casualty

A JORDANIAN weightlifter was sent home from the Asian Games village in Bangkok yesterday after becoming the first athlete to fail a drugs test at Asia's leading sporting event. Games officials said Ayed Jassar Khwaldeh had tested positive for the banned diuretic triamterene.

Ayed admitted using the drug to bring down his weight on a three-week training camp. It was the first positive drug test in the four-day-old Games after more than a dozen positives at the 1994 Games in the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

The OCA said that when Ayed was weighed on the day of his 56kg division competition on Monday he was 55.8kg, while prior to the competition his weight was 60kg.

It also resolved to issue a "strong warning'' to the Jordanian National Olympic Committee and subject Ayed to the sanctions outlined in the rules of the International Weightlifting Federation.

Swimmer Sharron Davies said yesterday that she hopes Olympic leaders will act on evidence of drug use by former East German athletes.

The International Olympic Committee opens a four-day executive board meeting in Lausanne today to consider rewriting the record books. The British Olympic Association has filed a petition on behalf of Davies, who won the silver medal in the 400m individual medley at the 1980 Moscow Games behind East Germany's Petra Schneider.

In addition, the US Olympic Committee is seeking "appropriate medal recognition" for the American women's relay team which finished second behind an East German quartet at the 1976 Montreal Games.

Davies finished 10 seconds behind Schneider in Moscow but Schneider admitted to Davies recently that she was on drugs from the age of 14 and now suffers from heart problems and other side-effects. Davies wants the record books to show that Schneider took drugs.