ATHENS, Aug 22: Women's Olympic shot put champion Irina Korzhanenko of Russia will lose her gold medal after testing positive for a banned steroid, the head of the Russian Olympic Committee's anti-doping body said on Sunday.

"The International Olympic Committee has begun the process of withdrawing the medal," Nikolai Durmanov said. "We are very disappointed," he added, saying that despite a drive to clean up Russian sport its administrators, himself included, had failed and might now be "sacrificed" for change.

Korzhanenko, 30, won the first athletics gold of the Athens Games on Wednesday at Ancient Olympia and failed a test immediately after the competition there. Cuban silver medallist Yumileidi Cumba should now take gold.

A B sample also gave a positive reading on Sunday, Durmanov said, confirming that the drug was stanozolol, the anabolic steroid used by Canadian Ben Johnson when he won the 1988 Seoul 100 metres final in record time. He was stripped of the medal.

At an Olympics hit by drugs scandals around the host nation's top sprinters and in the weightlifting arena, the failure is an embarrassing end to a Olympic high point when the "homecoming Games" returned for a day to the spot in rural Arcadia where it all began nearly 3,000 years ago.

In the Olympic shot put, bronze medallist Nadine Kleinert of Germany should now take silver and Russia's Svetlana Krivelyova, who finished fourth, would receive the bronze medal.

Gail Devers, one of the greatest 100 metres hurdlers in the history of athletics, looks destined to end her long career without an Olympic medal in the event after pulling up in Sunday's first round with an injured calf.

Devers has won the world championship three times and finished second twice but she has always failed in the event at the Olympics, despite winning the Olympic 100 metres flat twice.

The 37-year-old American went out of the Athens 100 metres flat in the semifinals on Saturday but lined up in the fifth heat of the hurdles as one of the favourites having recorded the second-fastest time of the year, 12.50 seconds.

Meanwhile, Asafa Powell of Jamaica recorded the fastest time of the two Olympic 100 metres semifinals on Sunday winning his in 9.95 seconds. However, the men seen as his major rivals Shawn Crawford and Justin Gatlin filled first and second places in their semifinal which the former won in 10.07sec.

Crawford and Gatlin cantered through their race and easing up 20m from the line both shouting at each other and, after they had crossed the line, cracked their heads together.

The other two to progress were Ghanaian Aziz Zakari and Barbados' Obadele Thompson, who took bronze in Sydney. Powell bidding to become the first man from his country to win an Olympic sprint title since Don Quarrie who won the 200m in 1976, looked relaxed as he sauntered home in his semi and handed out his fourth successive defeat of Olympic champion Maurice Greene.

The Chinese hit their Athens target of 20 gold medals on Sunday with a women's table tennis finals win by ace paddler Zhang Yining - a title that also marked China's 100th gold in its 20-year Olympic history.

The top-seeded Zhang demolished North Korean Kim Hyang-mi 4-0 in just 26 minutes to keep China on track to sweep all four table tennis golds for the third straight Olympics.

Earlier, Chinese shooter Jia Zhanbo harvested a gold medal men's 50-metre rife three-position target event after American Matthew Emmons fired at the wrong target as he neared victory. -Agencies