Medal stripping stands

Italian cyclist Davide Rebellin has lost his appeal against being stripped of the silver medal at the Beijing Olympic road race.

Rebellin tested positive for the blood-boosting agent CERA several months after the Games after the IOC decided to submit a number of samples for a newly-developed test.

Rebellin, who was stripped of the medal in November, appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne alleging several mistakes concerning the analysis procedure and challenged the validity of the testing method applied by the laboratory in Chatenay-Malabry.

CAS announced on Saturday: "The CAS panel has rejected all the arguments put forward by the athlete and has confirmed that the procedures of the chain of custody have been complied with and that there was no departure from the international standards for laboratories which could have reasonably caused an abnormal analysis result.

"Furthermore, the CAS panel has confirmed that the presence of CERA has been validly detected in the blood samples of the athlete and that the laboratory... applied a method of detection which already existed and was already validated."

Rebellin was one of five athletes who tested positive in April 2009 for CERA, an advanced version of the blood-boosting drug EPO, in new tests using retroactive blood samples taken at the Games.