Sydney 2000 American relay teams will not get their medals back

THE American women's relay teams from Sydney 2000 have fallen at the first hurdle in their bid to win back the medals stripped from them by the International Olympic Committee.

MEDAL CONTROVERSY: The relay medals won by the USA in teams containing Marion Jones will not be given back to US athletes (Getty Images)

Controversial sprinter Marion Jones was a member of both the 4x100m and the 4x400m relay teams which won bronze and gold respectively nine years ago.

Jones also won individual 100m and 200m gold as well as long jump bronze in Sydney but she has since admitted to taking banned substances, served a six-month prison sentence for perjury relating to her drugs use, and was formally stripped of her medals by the IOC in December 2007.

The IOC took back all the relay medals last April, leading Andrea Anderson, LaTasha Colander Clark, Jearl Miles-Clark, Torri Edwards, Chryste Gaines, Monique Hennagan and Passion Richardson to appeal the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

According to the Olympic Charter, ‘no decision taken in the context of the Olympic Games can be challenged after a period of three years from the day of the closing ceremony of such Games'.

But CAS opted to uphold the IOC's decision.

"The CAS panel has considered that the three-year rule did not prevent the IOC from withdrawing medals which were awarded at a victory ceremony because the distribution of medals, which occurs immediately after the race, is not in itself a 'decision'," read a CAS statement.

"If the CAS had decided that the three-year rule was applicable in the present case, the IOC decision of 10 April 2008 would have been annulled."

Earlier this month the IOC choose to reallocate Jones' individual medals but opted against handing the 100m Olympic gold to Greek sprinter Ekaterini Thanou.

Thanou herself has a chequered past, having allegedly faked a motorcycle accident to avoid a drugs test on the eve of the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

That was the third test she had missed and she subsequently served a two-year ban.