Three weightlifters from Kazakhstan have been stripped of Olympic gold medals won at London 2012 after new tests found them guilty of doping.
Zulfiya Chinshanlo, Maiya Maneza and Svetlana Podobedova were all caught when samples from 2012 and the 2008 Games in Beijing were retested.
Chinshanlo won at -53kg, Maneza at -63kg and Podobedova at -75kg and all tested positive for steroid stanozolol.
It has not been confirmed if their gold medals will now be re-assigned.
Eight athletes were sanctioned yesterday, with Marina Shkermankova of Belarus losing her London 2012 bronze medal in the -69kg class.
All Kazakh and Belarusian weightlifters could now be banned for a year from all international weightlifting competitions.
Under International Weightlifting Federation rules, automatic bans come into effect if at least three of a country’s athletes fail Olympic retests.
The International Olympic Committee has reported a total of 98 positive cases from recent retests of samples from the Beijing and London Games.
At least six of those cases came in one weightlifting event, the men’s -94kg category in 2012.
