Athletes want medals returned

Hungary's Robert Fazekas launched a bid to have his Olympic discus gold medal returned, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) said on Thursday.

Fazekas was stripped of his medal at the Athens Games last month for failing to provide a complete urine sample.

Fazekas had provided 25ml of urine when the required minimum quantity was 75ml. Hungarian team officials Zsigmond Nagy and Karoly Piko, told the International Olympic Committee at the time that the athlete was "a deeply religious person who has always had difficulty to produce a sufficient quantity of urine in front of sample collectors.

"The athlete had a serious psychological block and asked to leave the doping station straight away," they said.

The IOC said they had suspicions Fazekas had been trying to use a contraption to avoid giving a sample of his own urine.

The Lausanne-based CAS gave no details of Fazekas's case. "The Hungarian athlete requests the annulment of the decision made by the IOC Executive Board to exclude him from the Games and to withdraw the gold medal he had won," CAS said.

TESTOSTERONE LEVELS

Fazekas was joined in the appeal process by disgraced Greek weightlifter Leonidas Sampanis who is also seeking the return of his Olympic bronze medal.

Sampanis became the first athlete to be stripped of a medal at the Athens Olympics when he tested positive for high testosterone levels after finishing third in the 62kg category.

Like Fazekas, Sampanis has always protested his innocence.

"I'm going crazy, my life is destroyed," Sampanis, silver medallist at the 1996 and 2000 Games, said last month. "I can't sleep, I can't eat ... but there is no way that I have taken anything. Something is very wrong here."

CAS will also hear an appeal from the Canadian gymnastics body, a spokesman said.

Gymnastics Canada (GC) wants Kyle Shewfelt to be awarded bronze in the men's artistic gymnastics vault, saying the evaluation of the performance of Romanian Marian Dragulescu, who finished third, was not done in accordance with the rules of the FIG Code of Points.