SANTO DOMINGO, 12 August 2003 — Former world No. 1 tennis player Marcelo Rios missed out on an opportunity to win gold on Sunday as this year’s Pan American Games suffered its first doping case.
Thirty-eight-year-old Letitia Vriesde of Surinam, silver medalist at the 1995 world championships, will have her 800 meters gold medal taken away after testing positive for caffeine, games officials said.
In total, 37 gold medals were decided in sports ranging from cross-country mountain-biking to racquetball, water polo and triathlon.
Thirteen of them went to the United States who increased their overall tally to 63, twelve more than second-placed Cuba.
Rios, the only player from the world’s top-100 to enter the tennis, had been expected to easily snap up the men’s singles tennis and win Chile’s second gold of the games.
Instead, he fell victim to his only serious rival, 33-year-old Brazilian Fernando Meligeni, who had already announced he would retire after the Panam tournament.
Rios said on Saturday that he wanted to be the last player to beat Meligeni, ranked 125th compared to the Chilean’s 43rd.
However, despite winning the first set 7-5, he was made to eat his words as Meligeni saved match points in both the second and third sets before winning 5-7, 7-6, 7-6.
“It was dramatic, it was exciting. It was the last match of my career and it was very emotional to have retired with a gold” Meligeni said.
The two South American left-handers both lived up to their reputations for tantrum throwing as Meligeni bickered over line calls and Rios insisted that a Brazilian flag was removed from the courtside.
Rios, playing alongside Adrian Garcia, was also out of luck in the doubles.
Again, he won the first set but again his opponents, this time Santiago Gonzalez and Alejandro Hernandez of Mexico, hit back to win 6-7, 6-2, 6-3.
However, the Games were overshadowed by their first doping case with as Pan American Sports Organization president Mario Vazquez Rana said that caffeine levels found in Vriesde’s test were the equivalent to drinking five gallons of coffee.
“The Surinamese team have accepted the results,” he said.
As a result, the small South American nation will lose the only medal they have won at this year’s games with Adriana Munoz of Cuba, who finished second in two minutes 2.96 seconds in tomorrow’s race, taking the gold instead.
Six-times world champion Robert Scheidt of Brazil won the Laser class in the yachting after the first ten of the 12 races.
He did not need to compete in the last two as the worst two scores are discarded.
Scheidt, Olympic champion in 1996, was among eight Brazilians to win golds as the South American nation moved up to third in the medals table.
World champions Argentina cruised into the final of the women’s hockey tournament.
The team known as the Lionesses devoured Uruguay 7-0 and will face the United States in the final after the North Americans beat Chile 6-1.
Archrivals Cuba and the United States, both fielding second-string sides, will meet in the baseball final after beating Nicaragua and Mexico respectively.
