Russian lifters also face Rio ban
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RUSSIA’S weightlifters face being kicked out of the Rio Olympics for repeated doping violations, days after the International Olympic Committee upheld a ban on their track and field athletes.
Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus are to be suspended for one year by the International Weightlifting Federation over failed retests from the 2008 and 2012 Games in Beijing and London.
The IWF executive announced this month that 20 suspicious cases had been found in retrospective tests carried out on samples from the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.
Following those revelations, the IWF held a special executive committee meeting on Wednesday in Tblisi, Georgia, where it reaffirmed its commitment to “zero tolerance” of doping with the aim of “protecting clean athletes”.
“The IWF Executive Board has decided that national federations confirmed to have produced three or more anti-doping rule violations in the combined re-analysis process of the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games shall be suspended for one year,” a statement said.
The federations were named as Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.
The ban will be applied if the athletes’ “B” samples are confirmed by the IOC as testing positive for prohibited substances.
The move was strongly criticized by Russian Sports Minister Vitali Mutko.
“I don’t understand these decisions. They look like a case of psychosis and a deviation from every legal standard and principle,” he told news agency R-Sport.
“How can you penalize a team that has to go to the Olympics in 2016 for violations committed in 2008 or 2012?”
He described the situation as “chaotic”, adding that Russia “was going to look at all the decisions” before deciding whether to appeal.
The IWF also punished three others — North Korea, Azerbaijan and Moldova — with sanctions that will reduce the number of slots available to them in Rio.
Their punishment was for committing multiple doping offenses in 2015, a year that saw an unprecedented 24 positive tests at the world championships in Houston, Texas, in December.
Azerbaijan and North Korea are both to be stripped of one man and one woman competitor, and Moldova will lose two men from their Rio quota of lifters.
The statement said a total of 11 places had been taken away from six teams who had committed four or more doping offenses last year. The other three were Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, whose sanctions will only apply should they be allowed to compete.
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