PARIS (AP) — No carrots. To save weightlifting from the rot of doping, the International Olympic Committee must continue to wield the big stick.
When initial drug testing came back negative from the most recent world championships, it fleetingly seemed that weightlifting might be starting to turn a corner. Perhaps the fight launched against the sports steroid culture, laid bare by more than 50 positive tests from the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games, was bearing fruit? Maybe IOC pressure and a vague threat to possibly exclude weightlifting from future Olympic competition had helped steer dopers away from their needles and pills?
Wishful thinking. When those world championship drug-test samples were then subjected to deeper scrutiny using additional laboratory analysis and sophisticated computer algorithms, a grimmer picture emerged that shot holes in the notion of a sport on the mend. The follow-up testing snared at least eight lifters , all from Thailand, including three who won world titles in November and four others who also won medals. Two of them are Olympic champions from the 2016 Rio Games, including one who had previously been banned for steroid use for two years.
Clearly, then, some lifters still arent getting the message that because of systematic doping, they and their sport are on a slippery slope toward becoming an irrelevancy and a joke. Thats a shame, because the sight of huffing, puffing lifters heaving monstrous weights has long been one of the great Olympic spectacles, with boisterous and admiring crowds. The sport offered medal opportunities for countries, such as Thailand, that arent Olympic powerhouses. But when anti-doping tests later reveal that much of the show is a fraud, the question must be asked: Is the IOC aiding and abetting steroid abuse in weightlifting by keeping it in the Olympics?
Fresher, younger sports can make solid arguments that they set a better, cleaner example and so are more deserving of inclusion in the games. Part of the appeal of skateboarding, climbing , surfing and karate, all making their Olympic debuts at the 2020 Tokyo Games, and of breakdancing, being proposed for inclusion in Paris in 2024, is that Olympic audiences should be able to enjoy them without the nagging doubt that many medals may have been won with doping and could be stripped when lab results come back.
Nearly half of the 45 weightlifting medals from the 2012 London Olympics were tainted by doping in one way or another. Some medalists were belatedly caught when the IOC subjected samples it had stored away to improved testing that uncovered widespread use of the steroids stanozolol and turinabol among lifters from former Eastern Bloc nations. Kazakhstan lifter Ilya Ilin, who won gold in the mens 94-kilogram category in 2012 and at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, had the dubious distinction of later being stripped of both those medals after retesting revealed him as a steroid user.
Others medalists escaped that IOC net but were then unmasked by testing elsewhere. North Koreas Kim Un Guk, for example, has kept his 2012 Olympic gold from the mens featherweight competition but is banned until the end of this year following a positive test in 2015. The 2012 gold in the 85-kilogram class remains with Polands Adrian Zielinski. But he then tested positive in 2016 and, after the Court of Arbitration for Sport recently rejected his appeal , is now serving out his four-year suspension.
On the womens side, the shocking case of Cristina Iovu, in particular, has weakened the argument that anti-doping suspensions have a deterrent effect. IOC retesting found that Iovu used turinabol when she won a bronze medal for Moldova in the 53-kilogram class in 2012. She also failed a test in 2013, having switched allegiances to Azerbaijan, and was banned for two years until 2015. In what could now be a third strike for Iovu, and for a third country, the International Weightlifting Federation announced in December that the athlete, now lifting for Romania, is again suspended while being investigated for another suspected anti-doping violation.
In short, those who paid for weightlifting tickets at recent Olympics might have a case for a refund. Getting medals to rightful owners has taken years. Spains Lidia Valentin Perez waited a decade for her silver medal from the 2008 OlymRead More – Source
PARIS (AP) — No carrots. To save weightlifting from the rot of doping, the International Olympic Committee must continue to wield the big stick.
When initial drug testing came back negative from the most recent world championships, it fleetingly seemed that weightlifting might be starting to turn a corner. Perhaps the fight launched against the sports steroid culture, laid bare by more than 50 positive tests from the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games, was bearing fruit? Maybe IOC pressure and a vague threat to possibly exclude weightlifting from future Olympic competition had helped steer dopers away from their needles and pills?
Wishful thinking. When those world championship drug-test samples were then subjected to deeper scrutiny using additional laboratory analysis and sophisticated computer algorithms, a grimmer picture emerged that shot holes in the notion of a sport on the mend. The follow-up testing snared at least eight lifters , all from Thailand, including three who won world titles in November and four others who also won medals. Two of them are Olympic champions from the 2016 Rio Games, including one who had previously been banned for steroid use for two years.
Clearly, then, some lifters still arent getting the message that because of systematic doping, they and their sport are on a slippery slope toward becoming an irrelevancy and a joke. Thats a shame, because the sight of huffing, puffing lifters heaving monstrous weights has long been one of the great Olympic spectacles, with boisterous and admiring crowds. The sport offered medal opportunities for countries, such as Thailand, that arent Olympic powerhouses. But when anti-doping tests later reveal that much of the show is a fraud, the question must be asked: Is the IOC aiding and abetting steroid abuse in weightlifting by keeping it in the Olympics?
Fresher, younger sports can make solid arguments that they set a better, cleaner example and so are more deserving of inclusion in the games. Part of the appeal of skateboarding, climbing , surfing and karate, all making their Olympic debuts at the 2020 Tokyo Games, and of breakdancing, being proposed for inclusion in Paris in 2024, is that Olympic audiences should be able to enjoy them without the nagging doubt that many medals may have been won with doping and could be stripped when lab results come back.
Nearly half of the 45 weightlifting medals from the 2012 London Olympics were tainted by doping in one way or another. Some medalists were belatedly caught when the IOC subjected samples it had stored away to improved testing that uncovered widespread use of the steroids stanozolol and turinabol among lifters from former Eastern Bloc nations. Kazakhstan lifter Ilya Ilin, who won gold in the mens 94-kilogram category in 2012 and at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, had the dubious distinction of later being stripped of both those medals after retesting revealed him as a steroid user.
Others medalists escaped that IOC net but were then unmasked by testing elsewhere. North Koreas Kim Un Guk, for example, has kept his 2012 Olympic gold from the mens featherweight competition but is banned until the end of this year following a positive test in 2015. The 2012 gold in the 85-kilogram class remains with Polands Adrian Zielinski. But he then tested positive in 2016 and, after the Court of Arbitration for Sport recently rejected his appeal , is now serving out his four-year suspension.
On the womens side, the shocking case of Cristina Iovu, in particular, has weakened the argument that anti-doping suspensions have a deterrent effect. IOC retesting found that Iovu used turinabol when she won a bronze medal for Moldova in the 53-kilogram class in 2012. She also failed a test in 2013, having switched allegiances to Azerbaijan, and was banned for two years until 2015. In what could now be a third strike for Iovu, and for a third country, the International Weightlifting Federation announced in December that the athlete, now lifting for Romania, is again suspended while being investigated for another suspected anti-doping violation.
In short, those who paid for weightlifting tickets at recent Olympics might have a case for a refund. Getting medals to rightful owners has taken years. Spains Lidia Valentin Perez waited a decade for her silver medal from the 2008 OlymRead More – Source
