South Korea's first
Olympic swimming gold medallist
Park Tae-hwan has failed a doping test, his agency has confirmed. The test was
administered by global swimming body Fina before the Asian Games in September
in Incheon, the Korea Swimming Federation said. Continue..
Park's management has
attributed the failed test to an injection for chiropractic treatment.
Park, nicknamed
"Marine Boy", is a celebrated figure in South Korea.
He won gold and silver medals
at the past two Olympic Games, and even has an aquatic arena named after him. Park would have to face an
international hearing.
Fina officials have
not named the drug found in Park's body during the test.
His agency Team GMP
said that Park was injected with a banned substance by a doctor while seeking
chiropractic treatment.
They said that he had
asked the doctor about the contents of the injection and had been assured it
did not contain illegal substances.
"As a world class
swimmer, Park Tae-hwan has been extremely careful about what he takes, and he
hasn't even taken cold medicine so that he wouldn't fail doping tests... Park
is more shocked by this result than anyone else," the management
said in a statement.
They added that they
were preparing to "hold (the hospital) civilly and criminally
liable".
In the 2008 Beijing
Olympics, Park won gold in the 400m freestyle and silver in the 200m freestyle.
He won silver in both events at the 2012 London Olympics.
But he fared less
successfully at the Asian Games last year, where he won bronze medals for those
events as well as a silver in the 100m freestyle.
Park is the second
high-profile Asian swimmer revealed to have failed a doping test in recent
months.
In November, China
revealed that Sun Yang had served a three-month doping ban before the Asian
Games. China said Sun had failed his test because of medicine taken for a heart
condition.
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