Weightlifting is buckling under the burden of a drug-taking culture that has made it one of the Olympic's most notorious events. The sport that first appeared at the Olympics in 1896 accounted for 48 of the 104 positive tests detected in new analyses on samples from the 2008 Beijing Games and 2012 in London. It could get worse as not all the results of the 1,243 samples have been revealed. Top of the sorry list was Kazakhstan's Ilya Ilyin, a four-time weightlifter of the year who was stripped of his Beijing and London 94kg titles. The London 94kg podium has been devastated by doping. Russia's Alexandr Ivanov has had to hand in his silver medal and Anatoly Ciricu of Moldova his bronze. The doping merry-go-round is now so farcical that Saeid Mohammadpour of Iran, who came fifth, is now in line for gold. The bronze medal could go to Tomasz Zielinksi of Poland who came ninth on the day.
"Weightlifting is clearly a sport at high risk of doping," said Olivier Niggli, director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
"This was clearly proved by the number of cases detected by the International Weightlifting Federation with WADA at the 2015 world championships in Houston and by the retesting of analyses by the International Olympic Committee."
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is to carry out a review from 2017 of sports that will be included in the 2024 Games. Events at the Rio Games this year, as well as previous Olympics, will be considered.
