MONTE CARLO, Monaco (AP) – The United States was stripped of its 1,600-meter relay gold medal from the 2003 world championships on Sunday because of Calvin Harrison’s second doping violation.

The gold instead goes to France, with Jamaica getting the silver and the Bahamas the bronze, the world governing body of track and field said.

Harrison was found guilty of using the stimulant modafinil at the U.S. championships in June 2003. He had contended that modafinil wasn’t specifically mentioned on the official list of banned substances at the time.

Harrison had a chance to appeal the ruling, but the International Association of Athletics Federations said he is too late.

Ten years earlier, Harrison tested positive for the stimulant pseudoephedrine during the 1993 U.S. junior indoor championships and served a three-month ban.

As a two-time offender, the 400-meter star was suspended for two years in early August this year and dropped from the American team for the Athens Olympics.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency also ordered him to forfeit his relay gold medal from last year’s worlds in Paris, and all his results from the time of the test have been nullified.

Harrison ran the opening leg of the relay final.

That means the other three runners – Tyree Washington, Derrick Brew and Jerome Young – will lose their gold medals, too. Instead, they will go to French runners Leslie Djhone, Naman Keita, Stephane Diagana and Marc Raquil.

Young has since been banned for life by the USADA for his second doping violation in a case that could result in the American 1,600 relay team from the 2000 Sydney Olympics – including Michael Johnson – losing its gold medals. The Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland, is yet to rule on that case.

AP-ES-11-28-04 0942EST