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Shamed athlete Rashid Ramzi is returning to the track aiming to make up for the heartache and anguish he caused the kingdom by attempting to qualify for the 2012 London Olympic Games and bring home an untarnished gold medal.
The Moroccan-born Ramzi, whose two-year suspension for doping officially ended early May of last year, is involved in serious training to compete at international level.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport threw out an International Olympic Committee (IOC) rule that barred any athlete with a doping suspension of more than six months from competing in the next Games.
The 32-year-old hopes to qualify for a coveted spot in the 1,500m race, one of the most prestigious events in the world of athletics, which he had previously competed in and given Bahrain false hope of its first-ever Olympic track and field gold medal.
According to a Bahrain Athletics Association (BAA) official, Ramzi will be making his attempt to qualify for the London event at the beginning of July. He declined to speak to GulfWeekly at this time because he says he is focusing his efforts on qualifying.
The middle-distance specialist was a former world champion in the men’s 1,500m and 800m events and an axed Olympic gold medallist.
In August of 2008, he was slapped with two years’ ineligibility by the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) for a doping offence and was found to have violated rules governing an erythropoiesis-stimulating agent, which is a banned blood-boosting substance.
The IOC had taken action against him and four other athletes who tested positive for an advanced version of the blood-boosting drug EPO in retroactive tests after the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
The IOC said that out of 948 samples analysed, seven resulted in an adverse analytical finding concerning six athletes, including Ramzi.
'The further analysis of the Beijing samples that we conducted should send a clear message that cheats can never assume that they have avoided detection,' said Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the IOC medical commission. 'The vast majority of athletes do not seek an unfair advantage. We intend to do all we can to ensure that they have a fair environment for competition.'
The IOC then ordered Bahrain’s Olympic committee (BOC) to return his gold medal ‘as soon as possible’ and asked the IAAF to modify the 1,500m results.
Fifteen months after the Beijing Olympics, the runner who took Bahraini nationality and denied using performance-enhancing drugs, was formally stripped of his medal.
Ramzi was born the son of a bricklayer in the Moroccan town of Safi, which has produced other great athletes such as the Boulami brothers – Khalid and Brahim.
Ramzi joined the Olympique de Safi in 1997 and was rapidly spotted as a promising athlete in the 800m-1500m range. In 1999 he collected his first international laurel with a silver medal in the 1500m at the African Junior Championships, in Tunis, with a time of 3:47.13.
In 2002, Ramzi and three other Moroccan runners, decided to leave Morocco for Bahrain, where they were offered jobs in the army, good training facilities and opportunities to train abroad.
The men’s 1500 metres competition at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London will be held at the Olympic Stadium on August 3-7. Qualification ends on July 8.
