Julie Foudy, a former captain of the US football team, is one of 29 athletes chasing four places on the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Athletes' Commission, which is the link between active competitors and the Olympic Movement.

 

Hoy, Britain's three-time Olympic gold medal cyclist, is also standing in the election for which every athlete competing in the Beijing Olympics is eligible to vote for.

 

The USOC were sanctioned after offering $50 (£27) vouchers to each of its 595-team competing in Beijing to ensure that they voted.

 

The USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said they had originally intended to give the vouchers, which can be used toward purchasing merchandise at the USA House in Beijing, to the athletes before the Games ended.

 

Seibel said: "In no way did we intend to push the rules."

 

An unnamed athlete standing for election has also been sanctioned by the IOC for breaking election rules by distributing leaflets in an area in the Olympic Village where they were not supposed to be.

 

Besides Hoy and Foudy, a member of the US team that won the gold medal in the 1996 and 2004 Olympics,  these standing include Australian swimmer Grant Hackett, Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang, Denmark's 800 metres world record holder WIlson Kipketer, Spanish tennis player Aranxta Sanchez-Vicario and Kenya's former world marathon record holder Paul Tergat.

 

To be eligible an athlete must have competed in the 2004 or the 2008 Olympics.

 

Steve Roush, the head of sports performance at the USOC, said: "There have been a couple of other reprimands priors to ours.

 

"The difference between ours and maybe those is that athletes were involved where this one involved the NOC (National Olympic Committee)."