Eleven London Olympics weightlifters fail doping tests

Eleven weightlifters, including six medallists, produced positive samples in the second wave of doping retests from the 2012 London Olympics, the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) said on Wednesday (July 27).

Russia’s five-times European champion Nataliya Zabolotnaya was among three silver medallists from the London Games to fail tests along with compatriots Alexandr Ivanov and Svetlana Tzarukaeva.

Zabolotnaya finished second in the women’s -75kg event in London, repeating her silver-medal performance in Athens eight years earlier.

Ivanov was world champion in 2010 and 2013 in the -94kg category, while Tzarukaeva won the world title in 2011 in the 63kg event.

Other London medallists to fail tests included Iryna Kulesha of Belarus, Armenia’s Hripsime Khurshudyan and Moldova’s Cristina Iovu.

The IWF said the 11 athletes have all been provisionally suspended.

All the athletes who tested positive were found to have used the banned anabolic steroid Dehydrochlormethyltestosterone.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said on Friday (July 22) that 45 athletes had failed dope tests after their samples from the 2008 Beijing Olympics and London 2012 were reanalysed.

The second wave of retests included 138 samples from London 2012, involving athletes from two sports and nine countries. The London 2012 retests produced 15 failures.