Armenia set to be banned from world weightlifting championships

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenia is among nine of the world’s most successful nations expected to be banned from this year’s International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) World Championships in Anaheim because of multiple doping offences at the Olympic Games, Inside The Games says.

The original decision to sanction nations with three or more retest positives was taken by the IWF at a meeting in Tbilisi in Georgia 15 months ago but much of the process was out of their hands and delays were caused by appeals and legal arguments.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) announced last week that the two most recent appeals, by Chinese gold medalists Chunhong Liu and Lei Cao at Beijing 2008, had failed, as had all earlier appeals by individuals or National Federations.

CAS cleared the IWF to suspend the nine nations - Kazakhstan and Russia with 10 retest positives each, Belarus seven, Azerbaijan five, Armenia four and Turkey,Ukraine, China and Moldova three each.

A total of 49 athletes, including 30 medal winners are expected to be banned.