Silver medalist Blonska fails drug test (CNN.com)
The International Olympic Committee said that it had opened a disciplinary procedure into Blonska, who finished second behind fellow-Ukrainian Nataliia Dobrynska last Saturday.
The 30-year-old Blonska served a doping suspension for the steroid Stanozolol between 2003 and 2005.
If the second sample proves positive on Thursday "she will be suspended for life," Lamine Diack, the president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, said in an interview. "Over and done with. And we go on."
The announcement came only hours forward of Usain Bolt’s attempt to clinch a 100-200 sprint double at the Bird’s Nest, one of the highlights of the track program.
Diack insisted that Bolt’s performance and the three world records set so far on the track would outshine any peremptory tests.
"This will not spoil the games. It will spoil nothing. If Blonska testing positive would ruin the games, that would kill us," Diack aforesaid.
"These things happen. there are 2000 athletes in the present state," he added. "It is not because Blonska is doped that we scrap Bolt. That would slay us."
Diack said he had been notified of the positive result by Gabriel Dolle, the director of the IAAF’s therapeutical and anti-doping department.
"Only on my way here, Dolle phoned me to affirm this athlete tested positive. The process is under way."
Blonska is also competing in the long jump and was third in qualifying ahead of Friday’s final. Her place in that event is now in jeopardy.
The third-place finisher in the heptathlon was American Hyleas Fountain, who would be moved up to the silver if Blonska is disqualified. Russia’s Tatiana Chernova would climb from fourth to the tin.
Blonska served a doping suspension betwixt 2003-05 and if guilty of a second offense, she could meet in front a lifetime put when exposed to ban.
She also won the silver medal in the heptathlon at last year’s nature championships in Osaka, Japan, and took gold in the pentathlon at the 2006 world indoors in Moscow.
British muscular expert Kelly Sotherton, who proficient fifth in the Olympic heptathlon, complained publicly for months that Blonska should not be allowed to compete in Beijing because of her doping past.
"I’m pleased her team-mate beat her," Sotherton said. "That makes it bittersweet. I’upshot have been absolutely upset if she’d won gold. The mulct you should pay if you lead drugs is not to compete at the Olympics."
Four athletes have been disqualified and kicked out of the games so far for positive drug tests — Greek hurdler Fani Halkia, North Korean shooter Kim Jong Su, Spanish cyclist Isabel Moreno and Vietnamese gymnast Thi Ngan Thuong Do.
Earlier put on Wednesday, IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said a total of 4,133 tests had been conducted so remoter, including more than 3,290 urine controls and 840 blood screenings.
By the expiration of the games on Sunday, the IOC will have carried out between 4,500 to 5,000 drug tests in Beijing, up from 3,600 in Athens four years ago.
Davies said 39 athletes had been caught ahead of the games in testing by means of between nations sports federations and anti-doping organizations.