LAUSANNE: Three female weightlifters from Kazakhstan have been stripped of gold medals from the 2012 London Olympics after failing retests of their doping samples.
The Kazakh lifters were among a total of eight more athletes sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee on Thursday after their stored samples came back positive for steroids.
A female weightlifter from Belarus was stripped of a bronze medal. Also disqualified were two other Belarusian lifters, a Russian hammer thrower and a Russian pole vaulter. The case against a Russian wrestler who won a silver medal was dropped because he has since died in a car crash.
The IOC stores doping samples for 10 years so they can be reanalyzed when improved testing methods become available.
Zulfiya Chinshanlo, Maiya Maneza and Svetlana Podobedova were all caught in new testing of hundreds of samples from the London and 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The IOC recorded a total of 98 positive cases in recent retests of samples from the London Games and 2008 Beijing Olympics.
(With inputs from AFP)