Drugs in Sport: Krabbe 'tested positive for drugs'

A LEADING German athletics official said yesterday that Katrin Krabbe, the double world sprint champion, had given a positive drugs test.

The official, who did not want to be named, confirmed a report by the German news agency, SID, that Krabbe and her German team- mate, Grit Breuer, had tested positive during out-of-competition tests carried out in the last few weeks.

'I have seen what SID have written and they are not lying,' the official said. 'I am not saying any more than that.' Krabbe decided against competing in Barcelona. She said the pressure was too great after an incident in which she and two other former East German team-mates, Breuer and Silke Moller, were alleged to have manipulated urine samples. They were cleared on a technicality.

SID reported yesterday that three A-samples (first samples) taken from Krabbe and Breuer during training camps in the eastern German towns of Zinnowitz and Neubrandenburg had tested positive. The B-samples would not be tested until after the Games. SID said the samples had contained clenbuterol, the anabolic steroid for which the British weightlifters, Andrew Saxton and Andrew Davies, recently tested positive. Saxton and Davies were sent home from the Olympics last week. The agency said the B-tests would be carried out in the International Olympic Committee-approved laboratory in Cologne.

Klaus Wengoborsky, who carried out the tests at the German Control laboratory on 23 July during a training camp in Zinnowitz, confirmed that there had been irregularities. He said: 'There were certain problems.'

Barcelona's testing programme found its first offender yesterday when Wu Dan, a Chinese volleyballer, tested positive for strychnine and was banned from the Games.