Last month, the IWF said its Executive Board had decided to
suspend for a year national federations that produced three or
more doping violations in re-tests from the 2008 and 2012
Olympic Games - made possible by improved detection techniques.
It named Russia, along with Kazakhstan and Belarus, but said it
would await confirmation of the positive tests from the
International Olympic Committee before implementing the
suspension.
On Friday, it noted that Russian competitors had been named in
the McLaren Report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency
that exposed evidence of state-backed cheating in Russia.
"The integrity of the weightlifting sport has been seriously
damaged on multiple times and levels by the Russians," the IWF
said in a statement. "Therefore an appropriate sanction was
applied in order to preserve the status of the sport."
Russia nominated eight weightlifters to compete in Rio but
Tatiana Kashirina, who won a silver medal at the London Olympics
in the women's +75kg category, and Anastasiia Romanova were
withdrawn due to previous anti-doping rule violations.
Four other Russian lifters were named in the McLaren report.
"...we would like to highlight the extremely shocking and
disappointing statistics regarding the Russian weightlifters,"
the IWF said in its statement on Friday.
"As of today there are seven confirmed AAFs (positive tests)for
Russian weightlifters from the combined reanalysis process of
London and Beijing, while the second wave of Beijing reanalyzes
is not yet in a stage when the names and countries involved can
be publicly disclosed."
Bulgaria's weightlifters had already been excluded from the
Olympics last year, after 11 lifters at a training camp tested
positive.
(Reporting by Jack Stubbs; Additional reporting by Ken Ferris in
London; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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