Balciunaite banned

Balciunaite, who won the European title in a season's best time of two hours 31 minutes 14 seconds last July, became the first Lithuanian athlete ever to take gold in the category.

"Based on the IAAF rules ... Zivile Balciunaite has been disqualified for two years and will have to return the European champion's medal," Eimantas Skrabulis, the president of the Lithuanian athletics federation, told a news conference.

The two-year ban takes effect from September last year.

"The fact is that the urine test has showed traces of banned synthetic steroids, but we don't know how they got there ... Balciunaite denies taking them," Skrabulis added.

The federation said earlier that Balciunaite's urine test at the European championships in Barcelona last year found a deviation from the allowed ratio between the male sex hormone testosterone and epitestosterone.

Both occur naturally in women but an increased level of testosterone can indicate it has been administered artificially.

Balciunaite was not available for immediate comment but her representative said she planned to appeal against the ban at the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration for Sport.

"We don't agree with the decision, and we are going to appeal ... It's nonsense that she took testosterone before the run," Aivaras Zilvinskas, a legal representative for Balciunaite, told reporters.

Last year, the national federation provisionally suspended Balciunaite but in December said it had insufficient evidence to ban her and would investigate further.

The Lithuanian athlete has denied taking banned drugs and said the test results could have been influenced by a drug she had been taking to relieve period pains just before the run.

"The investigation has denied that it (taking the period pain drug) could have had an influence on the test's results," Skrabulis told reporters.

"It was the most difficult doping investigation in Lithuanian sport's history ... but we are sure that today we made a fair and objective decision," he added.

"We wished we could have announced a different decision."

Russian athlete Nailya Yulamanova, who won silver in Barcelona with a time of two hours 32 minutes 15 seconds, is likely to be awarded the champion's title