You could say Pavle Jovanovic should have quit while he was ahead, but the U.S. bobsled push athlete saw nothing even remotely worth accepting in a nine-month doping suspension if it would cost him the Winter Olympics.
So he took his chances that he might wind up with an even tougher penalty when he appealed his ban to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and that panel Thursday handed him a two-year suspension.
Jovanovic’s attorney, Adam Driggs, said that while the nine-month penalty was relatively light, his client didn’t consider accepting it without a fight.
“We were aware that was a risk, getting two years,” Driggs said, “but nine months might as well have been nine years to Pavle because it would keep him out of the Olympics.”
Jovanovic, 25, of Toms River, N.J., tested positive at the U.S. Olympic trials Dec. 29 in Park City, Utah, for metabolites of the prohibited substance 19-norandrostenedione, a steroid.
Late last month an American Arbitration Association panel suspended him for nine months. Jovanovic blamed the test result on contaminated nutritional supplements.
Thursday’s decision also hurts driver Todd Hays’ hopes.
Chicago native Garrett Hines was pushing Jovanovic for a spot on Hays’ two-man sled, so Hays’ medal chances remain strong in that event.
The suspension, however, will hurt Hays’ four-man sled, with Jovanovic likely to be replaced by the talented but inexperienced Bill Schuffenhauer from nearby Ogden.
The decision came in contrast to one Tuesday in which it rejected the International Olympic Committee’s attempt to keep Latvian bobsled driver Sandis Prusis out of the Games.
The IOC said that suspension was “carved out” to allow Prusis to compete in Park City and banned him from the Games.
CAS ruled that the IOC’s own rules prohibit it from compromising the independence of federations that govern each sport.
IOC President Jacques Rogge acknowledged Thursday that “loophole” in the Olympic charter and pledged to close it.
Bomb hoax: Police blew up a plastic grocery bag filled with fuses and electrical wire Thursday, calling the package near the Olympic media center a “hoax device.”
Police said the bag might have been designed to see how authorities would react. It contained no explosives.
“There’s some concern it was like a trial run,” said Craig Gleason, a police department spokesman.
In the village: Rogge moved into a room at the athletes’ village Thursday night.
He intends to sleep there and eat breakfast with athletes before beginning his daily duties as IOC president.
Turned down: Former Olympian Eric Heiden, winner of five gold medals in the 1980 Winter Games, said he was approached about participating in Friday night’s Opening Ceremony, but he held out for the top spot–the last person to carry the flame and ignite the Olympic cauldron.
“They asked if I’d be one of the last guys carrying the torch, and I told them I wanted to be the last guy,” Heiden said on Sporting News Radio. “They said they couldn’t do that, and I said, `Well, then, I have other things to do.’
“So I kind of turned them down.”
