LONDON (AP) ― Olympic competition finally kicked off Wednesday, two days before the London Games’ official opening ceremony, although the joy of the first day of sport was tempered by athletics’ ruling body saying it had suspended nine track and field competitors for what it called “sophisticated doping.”

The Olympics got its first security scare ― a false alarm ― with Britain’s Ministry of Defense scrambling a Typhoon fighter jet to intercept a commercial airliner too close to the London Olympics site.

Stephanie Houghton gave Team GB its first win of the games by firing home a second-half free kick to seal a 1-0 football win over New Zealand at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.

The match was one of six women’s football ties that opened Olympic sport for the London Games. The International Amateur Athletics Federation announced it had suspended eight athletes for two years and one for four years for “sophisticated doping,” including one case of human growth hormone and two of synthetic testosterone.

Three were caught in retests of samples from last year’s world championships in Daegu, Korea, and six were caught in biological passport tests, which measure changes in an athlete’s blood profile.

“This is the second finding of growth hormone in athletics and one of only a very few to date in sport as a whole,” the IAAF said.

It will probably not be the last. A new doping test for human growth hormone will be used at the London Olympics after it was cleared just weeks ago following a 13-year process.