Six athletes were identified for doping at the Beijing Olympic Games although the International Olympic Committee (IOC) did not name them or the sports involved.

Rashid Ramzi [File photo]

National sports bodies in Bahrain and Italy confirmed Wednesday that 1,500m champion Rashid Ramzi and road race medalist Davide Rebellin were among the six for positive for the new blood-boosting drug CERA in retests of their samples.

The other four were Dominican women's weightlifter Yudelquis Contreras, German cyclist Stephan Schumacher, Greek race walker Athanasia Tsoumeleka and Croatian 800m runner Vanja Perisic.

If their backup "B" samples also come back positive, the athletes face being disqualified, stripped of medals and banned from the next Olympics.

The six new cases bring to 15 the total number of athletes caught doping in the Beijing Olympics.

Davide Rebellin [File photo]

The IOC reanalyzed a total of 948 samples from Beijing after new lab tests for CERA and insulin became available following the Olympics. The testing began in January and focused mainly on endurance events in cycling, rowing, swimming and track and field.

Ramzi won Bahrain's first ever Olympic gold medal in track and field after the Moroccan-born runner won the 800-1,500 double at the 2005 world championships.

Contreras competed in the women's 53-kilogram category, Tsoumeleka finished ninth in the 20km walk, and Perisic was eliminated in the first-round heats of the 800m.

The 37-year-old Rebellin finished second behind Spain's Samuel Sanchez in the Olympic road race, and Schumacher finished 13th in the Beijing time trial and dropped out before the finish of the road race.

The IOC previously disqualified nine athletes for doping at the Aug. 8-24 Olympics. In addition, there were six doping cases involving horses in the equestrian competition.

The IOC has already stripped four athletes of Beijing Olympic medals, namely, Ukrainian heptathlete Lyudmila Blonska (silver), Belarusian hammer throwers Vadim Devyatovskiy (silver) and Ivan Tsikhan (bronze) and DPR Korean shooter Kim Jong Su (silver and bronze).

(Xinhua News Agency April 30, 2009)