Two-year ban for Baumann

The former Olympic 5,000 metres champion Dieter Baumann will not compete at Sydney after receiving a two-year doping ban yesterday.

The former Olympic 5,000 metres champion Dieter Baumann will not compete at Sydney after receiving a two-year doping ban yesterday.

An International Amateur Athletic Federation spokesman, Giorgio Reineri, told reporters the federation's arbitration panel had not accepted Baumann's contention that his toothpaste had been spiked with the anabolic steroid nandrolone. Baumann is expected to appeal.

The 35-year-old German tested positive twice for nandrolone last year, but was cleared by his national federation. The IAAF was not satisfied with the decision and referred the case to its arbitration panel which met in Sydney last weekend.

The IAAF council will today recommend sending the doping case of the Ukrainian shot putter Aleksandr Bagach to the panel. The 1996 bronze medallist tested positive for steroids this year and looks certain to miss the shot put final on Friday.

Four Romanian weightlifters were cleared to compete at the Games yesterday after the country paid a $50,000 (£35,700) fine to the International Weightlifting Federation to cancel a ban imposed on the team because of positive drug tests.

The two lifters who failed the tests before the Games, Traian Ciharean and Andrei Mateias, threatened to go on a hunger strike if they were not given a chance to clear their names.

But the Romanian Olympic Committee chief, Ion Tiriac, said Ciharean had also failed a separate doping test in August and would be sent home.