China faces a year’s ban from weightlifting

BUDAPEST: China is facing a oneyear ban from weightlifting over repeated doping cases in a move which threatens to stop some of the world’s top athletes from competing internationally.

The International Weightlifting Federation confirmed on Thursday that three failed retests of drug test samples from the 2008 Beijing Olympics will lead to China’s automatic ban - if the cases are proven and the athletes in question disqualified by the International Olympic Committee.

IWF spokeswoman Lilla Rozgonyi said that the positive tests for gold medalists Cao Lei, Chen Xiexia and Liu Chunhong, all announced on Wednesday, were enough for a ban under rules adopted by the IWF board in June.

“It happens automatically. The vote was already taken so now we only need to receive the closed cases from the IOC to proceed,” Rozgonyi said in an e-mail.

China is the world’s dominant country in weightlifting, having topped the medal table at every Olympics since 2000. It won seven medals in Rio de Janeiro this month, five of them gold.

Along with China, IWF said that Ukraine and Azerbaijan have joined Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, which were already facing one-year bans under earlier announcements.