IOC strips gold from 2000 U.S. relay team

BEIJING — The International Olympic Committee stripped gold medals Saturday from the U.S. men’s 1,600-meter relay team that competed at the 2000 Olympics in the aftermath of Antonio Pettigrew’s admission that he was doping at the time.

The IOC executive board disqualified the entire team, the fourth gold and sixth overall medal stripped from that U.S. track contingent in the past eight months for doping.

Three gold and two bronze were previously removed after Marion Jones confessed to using performance-enhancing drugs.

Saturday’s decision was almost a formality after Pettigrew gave up his gold medal in June. During a trial involving former track coach Trevor Graham, he admitted in May that he used EPO and human growth hormone from 1997 to 2003.

Five of Pettigrew’s teammates also lose their medals: Michael Johnson and twins Alvin and Calvin Harrison ran in the final; Jerome Young and Angelo Taylor ran in the preliminaries.

It was Johnson’s fifth gold medal of his stellar career. He has already said he was giving it back because he felt “cheated, betrayed and let down” by Pettigrew’s testimony. Johnson still holds world records in the 200 and 400 meters.

Three of the four runners from the relay final have been tainted by drugs.

Alvin Harrison accepted a four-year ban in 2004 after admitting he used performance-enhancers. Calvin Harrison tested positive for a banned stimulant in 2003 and was suspended for two years. Young was banned for life for doping violations.

SWIMMING: Swimmer Jessica Hardy will try to have her possible two-year suspension “reduced substantially” after a failed drug test cost her a spot on the U.S. Olympic team. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency said Friday the 21-year-old sprinter had withdrawn from the team nearly a month after she tested positive for a low level of clenbuterol, a prohibited anabolic agent, at the Olympic trials. Her lawyer, Howard Jacobs, said investigations were trying to determine the source of the clenbuterol. Once those are completed, Jacobs said, Hardy “will seek to have her period of suspension reduced substantially” by presenting evidence to an arbitration panel. Jacobs expects a hearing on the issue within several months.

TORCH: Crowds roared with delight and waved hundreds of Chinese flags in welcome as the Olympic torch began an emotional tour of Sichuan, three months after a powerful quake devastated large swaths of the lush, mountainous province. Guang’an is about 190 miles from the epicenter of the quake but was unscathed. After Guang’an, the torch will wind through four more cities, including Mianyang, which was threatened by post-quake floods and provided shelter for tens of thousands of residents whose homes were destroyed by the magnitude-7.9 quake.

BASEBALL: Matthew Brown drove in four runs and Trevor Cahill threw four dominant innings to lead the United States to a 7-2 pre-Olympic exhibition victory over Canada. Nate Schierholtz homered to help the Americans bounce back after losing 4-3 in 10 innings a night earlier in the opener of the friendly four-game series.

BASKETBALL: At Haining, China, Becky Hammon began her Russian national career with a loss. Anete Jekabsone scored 34 points to lead Latvia to a 75-69 victory over Russia on Saturday afternoon in the opening game of the FIBA Diamond Ball tournament, a tuneup for the Olympics. Hammon scored just three points — all from the foul line — and missed all six of her shots from the field. The 31-year-old point guard, who plays for the WNBA’s San Antonio Silver Stars, wasn’t in the 29-player pool used to select the U.S. Olympic team. So she chose another option: playing for Russia.

TRACK: Usain Bolt will enter the 100 and 200 meters at the Beijing Olympics. The Jamaican sprinter broke the world record in the 100 by finishing in 9.72 seconds May 31. But he had said he would leave it up to his coach, Glen Mills, to decide whether it made sense to compete in that event in addition to the 200, which had been considered Bolt’s specialty.