Sean Eadie is regarded as a folk hero

Sydney: Former world cycling champion Sean Eadie faces possible expulsion from the Athens Games for alleged drug smuggling, the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) announced Monday.

AOC president John Coates said Eadie was issued with an infraction notice Monday after it emerged he was caught importing human growth hormone into Australia five years ago. “We have advised Sean Eadie that we believe he has committed the offence of ‘trafficking’ and thereby breached the 1999 Anti-Doping Policy of the AOC and the 1999 Anti-Doping Policy of Cycling Australia,” Coates said in a statement.

Under AOC and Cycling Australia’s rules, athletes found guilty of trafficking face a minimum suspension of two years regardless of when the offence occurred.

Eadie, 35, could also be stripped of the bronze medal he won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

“If he doesn’t successfully defend this then certainly the IOC will take back the medal he won in 2000, I would think, and similarly any subsequent achievements or medals that he’s had would be at risk,” Coates told a hastily arranged news conference. Regarded as a folk hero in Australian cycling because of his distinctive beard, Eadie has 14 days to lodge an appeal against the infraction but Cycling Australia officials said they had not heard from him by Monday afternoon.

According to statements issued by both the AOC and Cycling Australia, customs officers intercepted a package in January 1999 that was addressed to Eadie.

The package, which had been mailed from California, included 16 tablets containing anterior pituitary peptides, a sub-class of peptide hormones that are both prohibited and undetectable. Eadie was notified of the seizure and the tablets were destroyed.

However, he was allowed to continue competing and won a bronze medal at the Sydney Olympics in the men’s team sprint event before capturing the individual world title in 2002.

Asked by reporters why the AOC was not notified about the incident when it happened in 1999, Coates explained: “The legislation at the time didn’t allow for customs to share information... but that was changed.”

Cycling Australia said Eadie had never failed a drugs test but customs officials began investigating him after he was implicated in a more recent drugs scandal. Eadie was one of five elite Australian cyclists accused by former teammate Mark French of using performance-enhancing drugs. French, who was banned from competing at the Olympics for life for a range of doping offences including trafficking, said the group used a room at the Australian Institute of Sport as a “shooting gallery” to inject themselves with steroids and growth hormones.