Five moments from the career of South Korean former Olympic champion Park Tae-Hwan, whose management agency said he failed a drugs test:
-- Park was born on September 27, 1989 in Seoul, and started swimming at the age of five as a way to control his asthma. After a succession of domestic victories and records he was picked as South Korea's youngest athlete for the 2004 Athens Olympics, aged just 14.
-- The young Park's Olympic debut ended in heartbreak when he was disqualified for a false start in the 400 metres freestyle heats, and spent two hours in the toilet crying. History nearly repeated itself in 2012, when Park false-started in the same event but had his disqualification reversed after a protest from South Korean officials.
-- The break-out meet for "Marine Boy" was the 2006 Doha Asian Games, where he picked up three golds among seven medals altogether and was named most valuable athlete. Despite failing to win a title at last year's edition in Incheon, he has gathered 20 Asiad medals in his career, a South Korean record.
-- Park shot to world attention at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where he won gold in the 400m freestyle and silver over 200m, becoming South Korea's first Olympic swimming medallist in what he called his "most glorious moment". He picked up silver in both events at the London Games in 2012 to take his tally to four Olympic medals.
-- After Beijing, the South Korean was expected to star at the 2009 world championships in Rome but he didn't even reach the final of the 400m or 200m. Unusual results at the "Plastic Meet" were blamed on the use of body-compressing, polyurethane swimsuits, later banned, which helped swimmers set a whopping 43 world records in the Italian capital.
Photo Credits : AFP