The International Weightlifting Federation announced in Paris on Monday that five weightlifters have been provisionally suspended after reanalysis of their urine samples provided during the 2012 London Olympics.
They include two Olympic champions, Ukrainian Oleksiy Torokhtiy and Uzbek
Ruslan Nurudinov. Oleksiy is 105kg gold medallist six years ago, and Ruslan Nurudinov won the same category in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.
Only Torokhtiy stands to lose his title, as the samples retested were given four years before Nurudinov’s gold-medal winning performance in Brazil.
The third weightlifter facing ban is Valentin Hristov of Azerbaijan. He could lose his 2012 bronze medal from the -56kg category after testing positive for an anabolic agent. He is currently serving an eight-year ban following two positive doping tests in 2013 and 2015.
The other two athletes to test positive are Armenia’s Meline Daluzyan and Belarusian Mikalai Novikau. They did not win medals in London.