Bulgarian lifting team banned

“All remaining lifters as well as officers from the Bulgarian Weightlifting Federation will not be able to take part in the Olympic Games.

The ban followed dope tests on women’s 48kg winner Izabela Dragneva and men’s 62kg bronze medallist Sevdalin Minchev. Both were stripped of their medals after traces of banned diuretics were found in urine samples.

On Wednesday, men’s 56kg silver medallist Ivan Ivanovmet the same fate after also testing positive for furosemide, a steroid-masking agent.

The drug is also used by lifters hoping to lose weight in order to remain within recognised weight limits for competition.

IWF vice-president Sam Coffa said the governing body believed the drugs had been taken by lifters to lose weight.

“We have concluded that they took these drugs to lose eight and nothing else. We tested them before the Games and if they were taking he diuretics to cover steroid use it would have shown up,” Coffa said at a press conference.

Dragneva’s gold medal will now go to Tara Nott of the United States, the silver to Lisa Raema Rumbewas of Indonesia and bronze to her compatriot Sri Indriyan.

“It was just starting to sink in that I won the silver, so right now I’m Kind of in shock,” said Nott, who also becomes America’s first weightlifting gold medallist in 40 years.

Gennady Oleshchuk of Belarus will be promoted to bronze from fourth place in the men’s 62kg.

Under the IWF’s current anti-doping policy a clause allowed the payment of a $50,000 fine to stay at the Games, invoked by the Romanian team earlier this week.

However IWF general-secretary Tamas Ajan told a press conference that accepting a fine to allow the Bulgarians to continue competing had not been an option.

“We would not accept money. This is the Olympic Games … it’s a completely different case to the Romanians, which were pre-Games tests.”

Coffa said an example needed to be made of the banned team.

In a further twist on Friday, two Bulgarian-born weightlifters due to represent Qatar at the Olympics withdrew from competition citing health reason, officials said.

Salelem Nayef Badr formerly Petar Tanev, and Sulyan Abbas Nader, formerly Andrey Ivanov, pulled out from the men’s 77kg final complaining of a “virus,” weightlifting officials said.

The two men had been training with the team banned Bulgarian team prior to the Games.