Russian silver medalist fails drug test

CESANA, Italy -- Russian biathlon star Olga Pyleva was thrown out of the Turin Games and stripped of her silver medal Thursday for doping, the first athlete caught in the tightest drug net in Winter Olympics history.

Pyleva was favored heading into Thursday's 7.5km sprint to win her second medal of the games. As athletes were walking up to the starting line, an announcer told the crowd that Pyleva was scratched because she had fallen ill.

But it didn't take long for news of the real reason to spread. A urine sample Pyleva submitted after winning the 15km event on Monday tested positive for the stimulant carphedon.

"Oh my goodness!" American biathlete Rachel Steer said. "I just noticed they said she was sick, and I saw her last night -- and she didn't look like she was getting sick."

In Pyleva's absence at the sprint, there was another shock: Florence Baverel-Robert took the gold. The Frenchwoman, competing in her final Olympics, never had won a major competition in the event that combines cross-country skiing and target shooting.

An IOC panel was hastily convened to hear Pyleva's case. Less than two hours after the race went on without her, she was kicked out of the Turin Games.

"It's a shocking situation," Pyleva told Russia's state-run First Channel, "because I've always been against using banned medications."

Russian officials at the Olympics were equally quick with an explanation: A doctor who treated Pyleva in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk for an ankle injury in January gave her an over-the-counter medication that did not list carphedon as one of its ingredients, said Dr. Nikolai Durmanov, head of the Russian Anti-Doping Committee.

"This was 100 percent the physician's mistake," Durmanov said.

The 30-year-old Pyleva is one of the biggest stars in biathlon, which typically draws more than 30,000 spectators to World Cup events and is Europe's most popular televised winter sport.