Commonwealth Games gold medallist Sanjita Chanu fails dope test

“In any case where it is determined that the Athlete did not commit an anti-doping rule violation, the relevant decision will also be published,” the IWF added.

The IWF did not provide further details, such as the dates of the dope test sample collection, saying “it will not make any further comments on the case until it is closed”.

News agency PTI has reports that the weightlifter has been asked to leave the camp by the Indian Weightlifting Federation and she has left for her home in Manipur. The other weightlifters are currently training at SAI Centre at Shilaroo in Himachal Pradesh.

Sanjita had taken part in the 53kg class in the World Championship in Anaheim, US in November last year, finishing 13th with a total lift of 177kg.
In Gold Coast, she lifted a total of 192kg to win the gold medal. It is speculated that the positive dope result could have come from her ‘A’ sample taken during the World Championship. However, it raises the question of how the the dope result was published so late since it is already six months since the tournament got over.

Besides Chanu, four other weightlifters were named by the IWF in the latest list of athletes who had tested positive. Spain saw its first positive dope test in eight years with 21-year-old Marcos Velasco found a failure – who was European junior champion in 2016. Iuri Dudoglo, 26-year-old from Moldova, who also competed for Azerbaijan and was already serving an eight-year ban for a second offence, has also been announced as a failure. Also confirmed as failing by the IWF is Thailand’s Witoon Mingmoon – a bronze medallist at 56kg in last year’s IWF World Championships and the 2016 junior world champion. Anastassiya Ibrahimli, from Azerbaijan, who also competed for Kazakhstan, and who was a gold medallist at 69kg in last year’s Islamic Solidarity Games, finishes the list.

Recently, the International Weightlifting Federation has decided to punish dope offending countries to limit their quotas for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics after the IOC applied pressure to clean the tainted sport.

It was decided that countries like Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Belarus will be given only two places each at Tokyo 2020 — as the new rules state that any nation with 20 or more doping violations from 2008 to 2020 will have just one man and one woman at the Games.

Countries with 10-19 doping violations over that same period will be limited to two men and two women in Tokyo. At least nine more countries, including Bulgaria, Iran and India fall into that category.

This decision to limit Olympic quotas, however, will not have much impact on India as the country has not been sending more than two weightlifters each in men and women’s sections in the Olympics during the past few editions.

(With PTI inputs)