One hundred and eighty-one athletes from Belarus competed in 28 events at the Beijing Olympics. Before the Olympics started, the National Olympic Committee of Belarus announced that medal winners would be awarded cash prizes, valued in United States dollars, from the Committee and their sponsors. Another sponsor, Belatmit, offered gold medal winners free sausage for life. The women's basketball team would be given free sausage regardless of what medal they won. The team captain was Ivan Tsikhan and fencer Alexander Romankov carried the national flag during the opening ceremonies. Overall, Belarus took home 19 medals, with four medals being gold, placing 16th in the medal standings, 13th in the total medal count. At a ceremony bestowing state decorations on the Olympic champions President Lukashenko said his country had performed better in Beijing than they did in Athens, but he still called the Games a "missed opportunity", winning fewer gold medals than he personally had expected. However, on September 21, the IOC has asked Vadim Devyatovskiy and Ivan Tsikhan to provide the body information on why they tested positive for abnormal traces of testosterone after the completion of the hammerthrow final on August 17. If found guilty, the pair will be stripped of their respective medals and Devyatovskiy will face a lifetime ban for a second doping offense. The IOC found them guilty on December 11 and officially stripped them of their medals.