OLYMPIC GAMES: Fina gets tough on drugs

Swimming's world governing body, Fina, voted yesterday to suspend member federations for two years if four anabolic steroid offences are committed within 12 months by swimmers under their jurisdiction.

No other sporting federation has imposed a similar ban, and the move could have major ramifications for other governing bodies.

The Fina congress also voted to retain recently imposed automatic four- year bans for a first steroid offence despite moves by the federation's leaders to revert to a minimum two-year ban.

Fina decided on a four-year ban for a first steroid offence at an extraordinary congress in Rio de Janeiro last November but postponed a decision on penalties against federations.

The Russian weightlifter Yuri Myshkovets, the European champion in the under-83 kilogram class, has failed a drugs test and has been barred from going to Atlanta.

The Russian coach, Armen Nalbandyan, said that Myshkovets had been sent home from a training camp in Podolsk, just outside Moscow, after testing positive for a banned substance in tests ordered by the weightlifting federation.

The positive test came as a surprise to the national federation, he said, but Myshkovets had been sent home to his native St Petersburg. Nalbandyan did not identify the substance for which he had tested positive.

The news is the latest in a series of drugs scandals which have already affected the Centennial Games, which begin on Saturday.

The Australian sprinter Dean Capobianco has been suspended by his national governing body after a positive drugs test, while the Italian high jumper Antonella Bevilacqua, who tested positive for the banned stimulant ephedrine twice in May, has now been banned from competing by her national federation.

Organisers of the Olympic three-day event have said they are prepared to stop the event if Atlanta's renowned heat and humidity become too severe.

Hugh Thomas, the Englishman charged with overseeing the horse trials as the technical delegate of the International Equestrian Federation, said that while abandonment is unlikely, it does remain a possibility. "If it comes to it we will," he admitted. "We're not going to go blithely on if conditions get to a stage where we can't be confident of what we're doing."