New wave of Beijing Olympics failed drug tests as IOC targets Rio-bound athletes
The British Olympic Association was unaware of any Team GB athletes being among those caught cheating after the re-examination of anti-doping samples from the 2008 Beijing Games.
The International Olympic Committee announced on Tuesday that it had retested 454 samples, from which 31 positives tests were discovered, coming from six different sports and 12 countries.
The IOC said it had focused on athletes who were still active and therefore may have gone to the Rio Olympics this summer.
The IOC has announced 31 athletes from six sports have failed doping tests after the retesting of samples from Beijing 2008
The Chinese authorities, working with the IOC, conducted 4,500 tests during the Games but caught only six athletes at the time, and three more in the months immediately afterwards.
A first wave of retests was carried out in 2009 when a new detection method for the blood-boosting drug EPO became available, catching six more drugs cheats, including Bahrain's Rashid Ramzi, the winner of the men's 1,500 metres on the track, and Italian cyclist Davide Rebellin, who won a silver medal in the road race.
No British athletes are among those already sanctioned and it is understood the IOC is in the process of contacting the 12 national Olympic committees involved.
A BOA spokesman told Press Association Sport there had been no contact from the IOC.
The Lausanne-based Olympic body's executive board also announced on Tuesday that the results of 250 more re-tests from London 2012 would come shortly, with further retesting of medallists from 2008 and 2012 planned, too.
"All these measures are a powerful strike against the cheats we do not allow to win," said IOC president Thomas Bach.
"The re-tests from Beijing and London and the measures we are taking following the worrying allegations against the laboratory in Sochi are another major step to protect the clean athletes irrespective of any sport or any nation.
"We keep samples for 10 years so that the cheats know that they can never rest."
Bach's reference to Sochi follows allegations of systematic cheating by Russia during the 2014 Winter Olympics.
This was strongly hinted at in the World Anti-Doping Agency's independent commission inquiry into doping within Russian athletics last year, a damning report that led to Russia's track and field programme being sidelined.
A decision on whether they will be reinstated for the Rio Olympics will be announced on June 17, with many anti-doping experts saying they have no chance.
So far most of the attention during the Russian doping crisis has been focused at the International Association of Athletics Federations, where several former senior figures have been found to have covered up positive tests, and WADA.
But the IOC has come under increasing fire for saying so little about the growing evidence that the problem goes beyond athletics and Russia.
The retesting of samples from previous Games is not new, with anti-dopers usually waiting until the statute of limitations is about to kick in so they can take full advantage of any testing developments.
The statute of limitations in place for Beijing was eight years, which means the IOC had until the end of the summer to look again, but the decision to press on with retesting from London is a response to the months of negative headlines that have engulfed Olympic sport.
With that in mind, it is telling that the IOC has also asked WADA "to initiate a fully-fledged investigation into allegations that testing at the Sochi laboratory was subverted".
Former WADA president Dick Pound, the man who led the initial investigation into Russian athletics, has said he is willing to go back into Russia to extend his investigation if the IOC or WADA would sanction and pay for it.
The IOC has asked the Lausanne laboratory that is storing all the samples from Sochi to cooperate with the new inquiry and has placed its medical chief Dr Richard Budgett, a rowing gold medallist for Great Britain at the 1984 Olympics, at its disposal.
As well as doping, the Olympics has had to deal with reports of corruption around the decision to award the 2020 Games to Tokyo in recent weeks.
The IOC executive board said it noted the response from the Japanese Olympic Committee to those reports and it would "continue to work to shed full light into the issue".
Na terça-feira, o Comitê Olímpico Internacional (COI), realizou processos disciplinares contra os 31 atletas não identificados em seis esportes, todos eles competiram em Pequim (2008) e que planejaram competir novamente nos Jogos Olímpicos do Rio de Janeiro em agosto.

A principal investigação de doping por alegações de drogas nos Jogos Olímpicos de Pequim 2008 surgiram a partir das amostras colhidas nos Jogos de 2008 que está sendo testada novamente, o que significa que potencialmente os concorrentes de todos os doze países poderão perderem seus lugares para competição a este evento deste ano.

Havia cerca de 4.500 testes realizados durante os Jogos de Pequim com apenas seis atletas pegos no momento e mais três nos meses seguintes. Os comitês do COI testam amostras de dez anos atrás para que um novo teste possa ocorrer com técnicas científicas melhoradas. Estas mais recentes resultados de testes positivos seguem a reanálise nas 454 amostras, o que significa que os atletas estarão impedidos, poderão enfrentar desqualificação retroativa e a perda de medalhas.

Os atletas atualmente em questão não foram identificados por razões legais, mas o COI irá informar comitês olímpicos nacionais nos próximos dias.

O COI afirmou que "todos aqueles atletas que violarem as regras anti-doping serão proibidos de competir nos Jogos Olímpicos".

As amostras dos Jogos de Londres 2012 também foram testados e os resultados serão anunciados em breve. O COI também tem a intenção de testar novamente amostras nos Jogos Olímpicos de Inverno de 2014 em Sochi por alegadas violações.

O presidente do COI, Thomas Bach, diz que "esta é um ataque poderoso contra as fraudes". Cinco atletas dos Jogos Olímpicos de Atenas (2004) foram apanhados com resultados positivos em retestes, incluindo Lançamento do Peso e Medalha de Ouro,  da .

O COI diz que "quer parar muitos atletas dopados de participarem no Rio de Janeiro, estamos mostrando mais uma vez a nossa determinação em proteger a integridade da competição olímpica."