Young Must Return Medal

Jerome Young, the U.S. sprinter who ran in the 2000 Sydney Olympics one year after he secretly had tested positive for a banned steroid, was ordered Thursday by the International Olympic Committee to surrender his gold medal. His agent said no.

Vowing legal action against the IOC and other U.S. and international sports authorities, Young’s Toronto-based agent, Morris Chrobotek, said in a telephone interview that he intends to put the medal “on a gold platter, with velvet, and I would like to deliver it into the courtroom -- where a jury is going to make a decision.”

Young was a member of the victorious 1,600-meter relay team, though he did not run in the final. Chrobotek -- who also once represented Ben Johnson, the Canadian sprinter stripped of a gold medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics for steroid use -- said of Young’s medal: “They can knock on my door and they will not receive it -- until we get justice.”

The action marks yet another turn in the six-year-old case. Sports’ top tribunal, the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport, ruled July 21 that while Young’s medal ought to be forfeited, the other five members of the U.S. team -- including legendary sprinter Michael Johnson -- could keep theirs. The IOC’s policy-making executive board ratified that ruling Thursday.

Only two other U.S. athletes have received Olympic medals then been told to return them: Jim Thorpe, who won gold in the decathlon in Stockholm in 1912, and swimmer Rick DeMont, winner of gold in 1972 in Munich. Both returned their medals.

“We think it is important that Mr. Young comply with the IOC’s request,” USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said. “An Olympic medal represents more than a final result at the Games. It is a reflection of how that result was achieved.”

But the USOC has little, if any, leverage over Young, who was banned from competition for life for two doping offenses. The USOC has no means to search Young or his whereabouts in hopes of finding and seizing the medal. And filing a lawsuit against him to retrieve the medal would prove costly and invite further complexities. According to Chrobotek, Young is destitute and “basically homeless.”

The USOC, in a bid to boost American influence within the IOC, has devoted considerable time and money in recent years to counter a perception it had been soft on anti-doping issues since the 1980s.

But during the appeals process in the Young case -- as the USOC sought to protect the medals for the other five team members -- three of the sprinters were tagged with major doping violations, Young for the second time.

Young, the 2003 world champion in the 400 meters, was banned for life after testing positive for the blood-booster EPO, according to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

Alvin Harrison accepted a four-year suspension for multiple doping violations linked to the BALCO investigation. His twin brother, Calvin, drew a two-year ban after a positive test in 2003 for the stimulant modafinil.

Young and Angelo Taylor ran in the early rounds of the 1,600-meter relay in Sydney. The Harrison twins, joined by Antonio Pettigrew and Johnson, running the anchor leg, won easily. Nigeria was second, Jamaica third.

For Michael Johnson, it was the fifth and final gold medal of his illustrious Olympic career.

It had been widely known at the time of the Sydney Games that a U.S. athlete had tested positive for a banned substance before those Olympics but had been cleared to compete.

The Times identified the athlete in August 2003 as Young. He had tested positive in June 1999 for the steroid nandrolone. A USA Track & Field appeals panel, ruling in secret, had cleared him to take part in the 2000 Olympics.

CAS ruled in 2004, however, that Young should have been ineligible because of the 1999 test and stripped of his medal. The International Assn. of Athletics Federations then recommended that all six U.S. runners be stripped because Young had taken part; that action prompted the USOC’s appeal to CAS on behalf of the other five medals.

IAAF rules now make plain that if one runner should have been ineligible the entire relay team ought to be disqualified. At the time, though, there was no provision for what to do in such a case and CAS ruled in July it would be “legal abracadabra” to disqualify the entire U.S. Sydney 1,600-meter relay team.

In other action Thursday, the IOC executive board, mindful that cutting softball would mean the loss of 120 female athletes from the Games, added slots for about 80 women in 2008. The number of teams in women’s soccer, field hockey and handball was increased from 10 to 12.

The board rejected a plea from the International Boxing Assn. to add women’s boxing to the program in Beijing. Concerned about scoring and judging issues, the IOC earlier this year froze about $9 million in payments due to the boxing federation.