Gymnast Andreea Rağducan Loses Her Olympic Gold Medal Because of Drugs

Date September 26, 2000

Sixteen-year-old Romanian gymnast Andreea Rağducan was stripped of her gold medal in the women’s individual all-around competition at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, after testing positive for the banned stimulant pseudoephedrine. The substance is a common ingredient in cold medicines, which she had been given by a team physician the night before her competition.

Locale Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Key Figures

• Andreea Rağducan (b. 1983), Romanian gymnast
• Ioachim Oanağ (fl. early twenty-first century), Romanian Olympic team physician
• Ion Tiriac (b. 1939), president of the Romanian Olympic Committee

Summary of Event

Andreea Rağducan was born in Barlad, Romania, in 1983. She showed promise in gymnastics from an early age and was a top gymnast on the Romanian national team by the late 1990’s. She lived and trained at the national training center in Deva. She became known for her high energy, skills, dance ability, and artistry, receiving comparisons to legendary Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci.

Rağducan’s specialties were the floor exercise, vault, and balance beam. She won the gold medal for the floor exercise finals and placed fifth in the individual all-around finals at the 1999 World Championships, and she was one of the top gymnasts in the world leading up to the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.

At the 2000 Games, Rağducan helped the Romanian women’s gymnastics team earn the gold medal in the team competition, the first gold medal for Romania since the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Her scores in the team competition also qualified her for the individual all-around, floor exercise, and vault finals. She finished the preliminary round of the all-around finals with the second highest total score, just behind gold-medal favorite Svetlana Khorkina of Russia. Rağducan went on to win the individual all-around gold medal in the controversial final round of the competition.

Halfway through the event, the vaulting apparatus was found to have been set to an incorrect height, a mistake that led a number of competitors to “crash”; however, there were few injuries. Khorkina had been among those who vaulted at the incorrect height and crashed. Rağducan also vaulted at the incorrect height, but she completed the vault without serious error. Those who had competed at the incorrect height had the option of vaulting again, but Rağducan chose not to do so. She became the first Romanian gymnast to win the Olympic individual all-around title since Comaneci at the 1976 Olympics. Romanian teammates Simona Amanar and Maria Olaru took the silver and bronze medals, respectively.

On September 26, a few days after the all-around competition, the Romanian team was notified that Rağducan had tested positive for the stimulant pseudoephedrine, which was on the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) list of banned substances. She was stripped of her gold medal in the individual all-around event but was allowed to compete in the event finals, where she won the silver medal on the vault but faltered on her usually solid floor exercise to finish seventh of eight competitors. Rağducan, her coaches, and Romanian Olympic Committee president Ion Tiriac protested the IOC’s withdrawal of her gold medal, claiming that the pseudoephedrine had been in two tablets of Nurofen, a commonly available, over-the-counter cold medicine given to her by Romanian team physician Ioachim Oanağ to treat her fever and cough. The IOC rejected the protests, stating that although they believed Rağducan did not knowingly ingest the substance and did not receive a performance benefit, they must enforce rules violations regardless of the circumstances.

As a result of the IOC decision, the individual all-around gold medal was awarded to second-place finisher Simona Amanar, who accepted it on behalf of Romania but qualified her acceptance by stating that Rağducan was the rightful winner. Third-place finisher Olaru received the silver medal and fourth-place finisher Liu Xuan of China received the bronze medal. Rağducan was allowed to keep her gold medal from the team competition and her silver medal from the vault competition because she had not been tested for drugs after the team event and had passed a drug test after the event finals.

The decision to strip Rağducan’s medal created a wave of public sympathy for the young, petite Rağducan, who did not meet the profile of an intentional doping violator. The same day her medal was stripped, Rağducan and the Romanian Gymnastics Federation appealed the IOC’s decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the sporting world’s highest court of appeal, based in Lausanne, Switzerland. An ad hoc CAS group, meeting in Sydney, ruled on September 28 that Rağducan was innocent of any wrongdoing and that she had not gained a competitive advantage from the pseudoephedrine. However, it rejected her appeal to reinstate her gold medal for the individual all-around event. The court agreed with the IOC’s rationale that regardless of the emotions or circumstances of the case, the Olympic antidoping code must be upheld in fairness to all athletes. Romanian team physician Oanağ was expelled from his job for the remainder of the Sydney Games and also was banned from the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City and the 2004 Summer Games in Athens.

Rağducan remained a popular figure to many both inside and outside gymnastics. The International Gymnastics Federation (IGF) also exonerated her of any wrongdoing and imposed no further sanctions, stating that the loss of her medal was punishment enough. She continued to train with and compete for the Romanian team and won five medals at the 2001 World Championships before retiring from the sport in 2002. After her retirement, she became a sports announcer, television-show host, and model and studied for a master’s degree in journalism at the University of Bucharest. Oanağ kept his medical license but, in addition to his Olympic sanctions, received a four-year ban from the European championships and all IGF-sponsored events.

Impact

The withdrawal of Rağducan’s gold medal attracted worldwide media attention and highlighted the tougher IOC position on violations of its antidoping code. Despite the public’s sympathy for Rağducan, many people believed nonetheless that preserving the fairness and integrity of the Games is more important for the integrity of the Olympics than any individual case.

At the time Rağducan lost her medal, the IOC had been facing increasing public pressure to crack down on doping violators and uphold the Olympic movement’s commitment to drug-free sport, a commitment that led to the more stringent antidoping policies. The uniqueness of Rağducan’s case, her proclaimed innocence, and her sympathetic nature would test the IOC’s determination to enforce those policies. Its decision to follow its own rule and automatically disqualify an athlete regardless of the circumstances of the charges sent a message that accidental violations would not be tolerated, or defensible.

Oanağ’s suspension also sent the message that team physicians and other medical personnel working with athletes must know the ingredients of any and all medications they prescribe or otherwise supply, and that all persons affiliated with a team, not just athletes, could face sanctions for their carelessness.

Bibliography

Begley, Sharon, and Devin Gordon. “Under the Shadow of Drugs: Doping—Tainted by Scandals, the IOC Starts to Crack Down.” Newsweek, October 9, 2000. Places the Rağducan scandal in the perspective of other doping violations at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and the public pressures that led to a stricter IOC antidoping policy.

Birchard, Karen. “Olympic Committee Bans Doctor After Doping Case.” The Lancet, September 30, 2000. This article, in a respected medical journal, examines the case against the team physician who gave Rağducan the medication containing the banned stimulant. Addresses the issue of physician responsibility.

Mihailovici, Sorin. “Recovery for Rağducan: Losing the Olympic All-around Gold Has Made Andreea Rağducan More Popular than Ever.” International Gymnast 43, no. 1 (2001). Examines the impact of the scandal on Rağducan’s athletic career and discusses her future in gymnastics.

Pound, Richard W. Inside the Olympics: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Politics, the Scandals, and the Glory of the Games. Etobicoke, Ont.: John Wiley & Sons Canada, 2004. An inside view of the history of Olympic doping violations and scandals by a longtime member of the IOC and the founding chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Wilson, Wayne, and Ed Derse. Doping in Elite Sport: The Politics of Drugs in the Olympic Movement. Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics, 2001. Examines the movement for controlling drug use by Olympic athletes from the perspectives of science, history, social science, and politics.