By Anita Snow, .c The Associated Press Sept. 18
HAVANA (AP) - Cuban sports officials on Friday refused a request by the world governing body of track and field to suspend Olympic champion Javier Sotomayor for a positive drug test.
Sotomayor, the world record-holder in the high jump, tested positive for cocaine at the Pan American Games in Canada.
Sotomayor has denied taking drugs and Cuba has backed him 100 percent
``The Cuban Federation of Track and Field continues to consider Javier Sotomayor innocent, and ratifies him as an emblematic figure of our sports,'' said Alberto Juantorena, vice president of the Cuban Sports and Recreation Institute.
His comments were carried in Friday's edition of the Communist Party daily Granma.
Sotomayor was stripped of his Pan Am Games gold medal after the positive test on July 30. Cuban officials have disputed the finding and claimed Sotomayor was the victim of a political conspiracy.
The International Amateur Athletic Federation received a 200-page document Wednesday from the Cuban federation defending Sotomayor. IAAF spokesman Giorgio Reineri said the document was a summary of Cuban leader Fidel Castro's pronouncements on the case.
In a recent live television appearance in Cuba, Castro said he believed Sotomayor did not knowingly ingest cocaine and suggested the drug was introduced into something the athlete drank shortly before taking the test.
``It was all a colossal lie, an infamous and shameful lie, a criminal plundering of merits won through denial, tenacity, consecration and sacrifice,'' Castro said.
Reineri said the IAAF did not consider the Cuban response a ``valid scientific document'' and would continue to press for action.
If the Cubans continue to refuse, the IAAF can impose its own suspension.
Sotomayor has not competed since the Pan Am Games. He pulled out of last month's World Championships in Seville, Spain, saying he needed surgery on a herniated disc in his lower back.
The IAAF on Thursday asked Cuba to suspend Sotomayor. At the same time, it asked Jamaican sports authorities to suspend Merlene Ottey, the sprinter who tested positive for the steroid nandrolone at meet in July.
Ottey has also denied taking drugs.
The IAAF has said the athletes must be suspended by their national federations pending a hearing.
The Jamaican federation said it would hold a hearing on Ottey's case by the end of November.
AP-NY-09-18-99 0050EDT
Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. |