MONACO (AP) — Twenty-eight athletes tested positive and are facing disciplinary action after their doping samples from the 2005 and 2007 world championships were reanalyzed, the IAAF said Tuesday.
Track and field’s governing body did not name any of the athletes, who produced 32 positive findings in tests from the 2005 championships in Helsinki and 2007 meeting in Osaka.
The International Association of Athletics Federations said none of the athletes will be competing in the upcoming world championships in Beijing, which begin Aug. 22.
“A large majority of the 28 are retired, some are athletes who have already been sanctioned, and only very few remain active in sport,” the IAAF said.
If athletes are found guilty of doping violations, the IAAF said it “will correct the record books and re-allocate medals as necessary.”
In 2012, the IAAF conducted a first round of retesting of urine samples from Helsinki and caught six athletes for doping. A second round of retesting began in April of this year, resulting in the 32 new positives, the IAAF said.
The statement comes amid scrutiny over testing procedures following media reports in Germany in Britain that blood doping was rampant in the sport, citing leaked test results from an IAAF database.
The IAAF has strongly rejected suggestions that it had failed to follow up on the suspicious tests and that it wasn’t doing enough to uncover doping.
The IAAF said Tuesday that the retesting of the 2005 and 2007 samples “commenced well before” the allegations made by the ARD network and The Sunday Times.
The samples were retested with improved scientific methods that can find previously undetectable substances. The IAAF also took advantage of the longer statute of limitations for testing of stored samples, which was recently extended from eight to 10 years.
“The findings reconfirm, yet again, the commitment of the IAAF to target and uncover all cheating in the sport, no matter how long it takes,” the statement said.
The samples were retested at the Swiss doping laboratory in Lausanne.
“We are at the cutting edge of the fight against doping,” lab director Martial Saugy said. “In our 10-year partnership with the IAAF we have been using every scientific advance and legal opportunity at our disposal to catch the cheats.”