In one of my last blogs, I was talking about athletes stripped of their medals by the International Olympic Committee. Most of those stripped of their medals failed drug tests. And for some reason, most of the medal removals seem to happen in summer Olympic games. For some reason, the records I found only showed four winter game athletes stripped of their medals.
Full scale drug testing by the IOC started in 1972, but anabolic steroids were not banned until 1976. If you think they aren’t serious about their non-drug use policy, let’s take a look at the first athlete stripped of his medal for it.
Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall was a Swedish pentathlete who was the first modern day Olympian disqualified for drug use. What was his drug? Reportedly, Liljenwall had a couple of beers to calm his nerves before the shooting portion of the pentathlon in the 1968 Mexico City Summer Olympics. What was really bad was after Liljenwall had his bronze medal stripped, the IOC took the medals of the rest of the team too.
The 1972 summer games in Munich saw four athletes lose their medals. Bakhaavaa Buidaa had his silver medal for Judo stripped because he failed a drug test. American Rick DeMont took a cough medicine that had ephedrine, which was banned. He lost his gold medal in the 400 meter freestyle swimming event. Spaniard cyclist Jaime Huelamo lost his bronze medal and Dutch cyclist Aad van den Hoek’s team lost their bronze medals when he tested positive for coramine, a drug that the Cyclist’s Union approved of, but the IOC had banned.
As might be expected, three weightlifters from the 1976 games in Montreal were stripped of medals due to drug use. Amazingly enough, no athletes were stripped of their medals in the 1980 Moscow games, but that didn’t necessarily mean athletes had learned a lesson.
Tune in tomorrow for my final segment on athletes stripped of their Olympic medals.