MANAMA - Bahrain's Rashid Ramzi has been stripped of his Beijing Games 1,500 metres gold medal for doping, Bahrain's Olympic Committee said Wednesday.
"The Bahraini Olympic Committee has received a letter from the disciplinary committee of the International Olympic Committee announcing the decision to strip runner Rashid Ramzi of his gold medal for the 1500 metres," committee secretary general Sheikh Ahmad bin Hamad told AFP.
"The International Olympic Committee has requested that the gold medal be returned as soon as possible."
Moroccan-born Ramzi won the Gulf country's first ever Olympic gold when he stormed to victory in the 1,500m in the Beijing Games last year.
He was one of five Beijing competitors who were later caught out when samples were re-tested in February and found to contain a new form of the banned blood booster EPO-CERA.
Ramzi, who gained Bahraini citizenship in 2002, one year after joining the country's armed forces, won the 800m and 1,500m double at the 2005 World Athletics Championships in Helsinki, becoming the first man to do so at a global event since since New Zealander Peter Snell in 1964.
Now Ramzi has been stripped of his Olympic medal, Kenyan Asbel Kiprop will likely be handed gold, with New Zealand's Nicholas Willis taking silver and Frenchman Mehdi Baala stepping up in bronze medal position.
Britain's double Olympic 1500m champion Sebastian Coe, chairman of the London 2012 Organising Committee and an IAAF vice president, praised the decision to strip Ramzi of his medal.
"That was the right decision. Cheats cannot prosper in our sport and people will realise that sooner or later," Coe told BBC.
"Unfortunately, that was high profile and we can do without it, but it also shows the quality of our testing procedures now."
Veteran Italian cyclist Davide Rebellin was stripped of his road race silver medal on Tuesday after also testing positive for EPO-CERA at the Beijing Games.
Rebellin's disqualification means that the silver will go to Switzerland's Olympic time-trial champion Fabian Cancellara and the bronze to Russian Alexandre Kolobnev. Spaniard Samuel Sanchez won gold.
The three other Beijing Games competitors to have tested positive in the February re-tests were German cyclist Stefan Schumacher, Greek 20km walker Athanasia Tsoumeleka and Croatian 800m runner Vanja Perisic.
The IOC had already disqualified nine other athletes for doping in the Chinese capital.
The body stripped Ukrainian heptathlete Lyudmila Blonska of her silver medal and North Korean Kim Jong Su of silver and bronze medals in shooting.