The International Olympic Commiteee announced Sunday to expel Greek lifter Leonidas Sampanis out of the Olympic Games and strip him of the bronze medal he won in the men's 62kg category at the Games after he was tested positive for a banned substance.

Sampanis, 33, a national hero days ago when he won his country' s first medal at the Games, became the latest Greek athlete to be hit by drug woes that have plagued the Olympics throughout their first week when the tests revealed double the permitted amount of testoserone in his body.

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 Iacovou 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.

And Sampanis's coach Christos Iakovou said, "I am stunned. I am going mad. We do not, and I stress this, do not, give our athletes testosterone."

The IOC's disciplinary commission was unmoved and the executive board expelled him from the Games Sunday.

So far 1,500 doping tests out of the expected 3,000 have been carried out at the Athens Games.