CAS confirms decision to strip Chicherova of 2008 high jump medal

ZURICH (Reuters) - Russian high jumper Anna Chicherova has lost her appeal against the decision to strip her of her 2008 Beijing Olympics bronze medal over a doping offense, sport's highest tribunal CAS said on Friday. Chicherova was disqualified by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in October last year after she tested positive for the banned substance dehydrochlormethyltestosterone (turinabol) in re-testing of samples from the Games. "The IOC Disciplinary Decision in which the athlete was found to have committed an anti-doping rule violation at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games is confirmed," CAS said in a statement. "The athlete is disqualified from the women’s high jump event in which she placed third." Chicherova, who is among several athletes to have been stripped of their Olympic medals following re-tests of samples from the 2008 and 2012 Games, told Reuters by text message that she was not ready to comment. "It seems that the arguments raised in the court by our side were pretty strong," she said. "We now need to analyze the full report on the hearings, which is 94 pages long, in order to make further decisions." Chicherova went on to win gold at London Olympics four years later. She said in June last year that a re-test from that event had been negative. Russia's athletics federation is suspended over a 2015 World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) report that exposed systematic state-sponsored doping in Russian athletics. While Russia has pledged to co-operate with global sports bodies over its anti-doping program, it has never acknowledged state support for doping. (Reporting by Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber in Moscow and Brian Homewood in Zurich, editing by Ed Osmond)