AUSTRALIA'S Olympic boss John Coates is hopeful that the International Olympic Committee's executive board will be able to strip disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong of his bronze medal from the Sydney Games when it meets in Lausanne next week.
Coates, a member of the IOC executive board, said Armstrong's case would be on the agenda, but the board would have to work around its eight-year statute of limitations on redistributing Olympic medals.
"I would hope we can deal with it because the evidence (against Armstrong) is overwhelming," Coates said.
He said he hoped the IOC's lawyers would be able to use the same approach that allowed the US Anti-Doping Agency and UCI to ban Armstrong from cycling for life, backdated to August 1998, and strip him of his seven Tour de France titles.
"USADA and the UCI went outside the eight-year limit on the basis that the statute doesn't apply if you have broken the law, so I imagine our lawyers will see if that also applies with us," Coates said.
Coates also joined IOC president Jacques Rogge in endorsing a World Anti-Doping Agency move to increase the standard penalty for serious doping violations from two to four years.
WADA considered introducing the IOC's Osaka Rule, which banned any athlete suspended for a serious doping offence from the next Olympic Games, but it was struck down by the Court of Arbitration for Sport this year as unconstitutional.
However, the new draft of the next WADA code includes the possibility of a four-year ban instead. "That (ban) is effectively the same thing," he said.
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