OLYMPIC ROUNDUP : Krabbe, Keshmiri to Skip Games

World sprint champion Katrin Krabbe has decided to skip the Barcelona Olympics, despite winning a four-month legal battle to have a drug-related suspension lifted, officials in Frankfurt, Germany, said Friday.

Klaus Licht, the track and field director of Krabbe’s club SC Neubrandenburg, said the sprinter had sent a letter to National Olympic Committee president Willi Daume informing him of her decision.

Daume confirmed Krabbe’s decision and said it was based on “purely sports reasons.”

“The decision was expected,” Daume said. “It is the chance for a new beginning.”

Licht said Krabbe had suffered mental stress during the four months of legal haggling and probably was not fully fit. Grit Breuer and Silke Moeller, the other sprinters involved in the case, also have decided to skip the Games.

Krabbe, the 100- and 200-meter world champion; Breuer, the 400-meter European champion, and Moeller were banned for four years by the German Athletics Federation in February for alleged manipulation of drug tests.

Although they contained no traces of drugs, urine samples submitted by the three sprinters were found to have come from the same person.

A legal commission of the German federation later lifted the ban, and on Sunday, an arbitration panel of the International Amateur Athletics Federation upheld the decision. Both rulings were based on legal technicalities.

The three athletes had denied any wrongdoing.

Last Sunday’s ruling by the IAAF panel cleared the way for the three to compete in Barcelona.

Krabbe had been given a place on the Olympic relay team but still had not passed the German qualification mark for the two individual sprints.

Kamy Keshmiri, the world’s leading discus thrower, is ready to withdraw from the Olympics because of a pulled muscle in his lower abdomen, according to his father, who is also his coach.

Keshmiri, a three-time NCAA champion at Nevada, won the U.S. Olympic trials in New Orleans June 22.

“After the trials, he got up in the morning and said, ‘I can’t walk,’ ” said his father, Joe Keshmiri.

In May, Keshmiri said he had pulled his abductor muscle the month before and aggravated it three weeks later. He said he had been taking an anti-inflammatory drug to control the pain so he could compete.

His father said the injury began as a small tear and worsened as his son continued to compete.

“During the trials, he took three times the dosage that he normally takes to numb it,” he said. “That damn injury has been hovering over his head.

“The man spent 15 years of his life in order to go to the Olympics. He’s upset.”