The Hindu : Sport / Weightlifting : Pratima and Chanu ineligible to compete in Beijing

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 23, 2006

Sport

Sport - Weightlifting

Pratima and Chanu ineligible to compete in Beijing

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: Pratima Kumari and Sanamacha Chanu, currently serving two-year suspensions following their positive tests at the Athens Olympic Games, will not be eligible to compete in the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Pratima and Chanu will be completing their suspension period in August this year.

They would be able to get back into the competitive field after they complete a set of out of competition tests as prescribed under the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) anti-doping rules. But they would still be ineligible to compete in the next Olympics.

Strict measures

The IWF has ruled that those having committed doping offences at the Athens Olympics, during "in or out of competition tests" in August 2004, would "not be allowed to attend any Beijing Olympics qualification event (the 2006 and 2007 World Championships as well as the continental Olympic qualification competitions) and the 2008 Olympic Games.

A recent IWF circular reminded the National federations about this decision taken in March 2004 by the IWF Executive Board and later approved by the Congress.

The IWF has also decided "in the interest of doping-free Olympic Games 2008" to bar the coaches who accompanied the "guilty competitors" from attending the Beijing Olympics.

The IWF stated that in the "interest of the doping free weightlifting events at the 2008 Olympic Games" the IWF was going to lay down an elaborate doping control system to be applied en route to the Games.

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