Athens - Greek weightlifter Leonidas Sampanis, who was thrown out of the Olympics on Sunday for a failed drugs test, has vowed to hang onto his bronze medal.
"I deserve this medal, I won't give it back," Sampanis was quoted by Greek television channel NET.
Greek Olympic Committee officials speaking to AFP said that the procedure to remove his medal had begun, but had no information that Sampanis has refused to comply with the instruction.
The 33-year-old Sampanis had won the first medal of the Games for host nation Greece in the 62kg competition but the drug tests revealed double the permitted amount of testosterone in his system.
His expulsion from the Games is a bitter blow for the host nation still reeling over the doping scandal surrounding sprint stars Kostadinos Kenteris and Ekaterini Thanou.
Weightlifting has been Greece's biggest Olympic medal supplier since the 1992 Barcelona Games and has been dubbed by the press here as the country's "dream team".
Sampanis and the Greek team's coach Christos Iakovou testified before an IOC disciplinary panel Saturday, claiming the athlete was innocent.
"I want to declare to the Greek people that I swear to God, to my two little angels, my children, that I never took any such substances," Sampanis told reporters after the IOC hearing.
"I want you to believe me, I don't want you to desert me," he said in an emotional statement made outside the Olympic weightlifting venue.
The IOC's disciplinary commission was unmoved and the executive board expelled him from the Games on Sunday.
Iakovou said the decision would have to be accepted although he said it was not logical to have such high testosterone readings.
"This would mean that he took the substance two hours before, but nobody does such a thing at the last minute, why should one?"
Iakovou suggested Sampanis might have been the victim of a sabotage attempt during the control.
"Sampanis had asked for an orange juice when he was in the anti-doping room which was full of people, more than 70... much more than there usually are." he said.
So far 1 500 doping tests out of the expected 3 000 have been carried out at the Athens Games.
