Three Russians stripped of Beijing Olympic medals due to doping offences
Thursday 1 September 2016 11:03, UK
Three Russian medallists have been disqualified for failing doping tests at the 2008 Olympic Games in China.
They include weightlifters Nadezda Evstyukhina and Marina Shainova, along with Tatyana Firova who was part of the relay team which finished second in the 4x400m event.
The Russian relay team had already been stripped of their silver medals because another member, Anastasiya Kapachinskaya, was disqualified earlier this month for testing positive.
Jamaica, which finished third in the race, will not be promoted into the silver medal position.
Firova, who tested positive for turinabol and other steroids, has also had her ninth-place finish in the individual 400m event annulled.
As for weightlifter Evstyukhina, she won bronze in the 75kg discipline, while Shainova took silver in the 58kg category.
Three other weightlifters have also been disqualified for doping offences. They are bronze medal winner in the men's 69kg class Tigran Martirosyan of Armenia, along with Alexandru Dudoglo of Moldova and Intigam Zairov of Azerbaijan.
The six sports people disqualified on Wednesday are part of 98 positive cases recorded in the retesting of samples from Beijing and the 2012 London Olympics.
Because the IOC store samples for a decade, they can be tested more than once using advances in scientific technology.
