International Weightlifting Federation may suspend Kazakhstan for 1 year
The IWF Executive Board convened for a two-day meeting in Tbilisi, Georgia on June 22 mainly focusing on anti-doping issues.
At the meeting, the IWF Executive Board made a decision to withdraw two quotas from Kazakhstan (1Man - 1Woman) due to the multiple positive cases in the qualification period. Romania, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Russia also lost a number of quotas.
Moreover, "the IWF Executive Board decided that National Federations confirmed to have produced 3 or more Anti-Doping Rule Violations in the combined re-analysis process of the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games shall be suspended for 1 year. Countries thus subject to suspension are: KAZ, RUS, BLR," the IWF's statement reads.
"The IWF will take appropriate measures to make sure that the athletes potentially implicated in the reanalysis process of the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games - once disqualified by the OIC - shall not participate in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games," the IWF added.
Earlier the IWF revealed on its official website that recheck of doping tests of several weightlifters, including Kazakh Ilya Ilyin, from the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games came back positive. The athletes will remain provisionally suspended in view of potential anti-doping rule violations until their cases are closed.
