Acting in-line with its Olympic Agenda 2020, the Apex Olympic Body, IOC, in a bid to protect the clean athletes, sanctions Ukrainian weightlifter Yulia Kalina for failing anti-doping test at London 2012 Summer Games.
The International Olympic Committee, has, since it outlined in Agenda 2020- the IOC’s strategic roadmap for future of Olympic Movement, put protection of interests of clean athletes and abiding the anti-doping standards as the top priority tasks.
For the Summer Games which will take place this August at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the apex Olympic organization has already put special measures in place, including targeted pre-tests and the re-analysis of stored samples from the Olympic Games Beijing 2008 and London 2012, following an intelligence-gathering process that started in August 2015, in a bid to provide a level playing field for all clean athletes.
As part of the drive to protect the clean athletes, the IOC today announced that Yulia Kalina, 27, of Ukraine has been disqualified from the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games and directed her to return the bronze medal from the 58kg weightlifting event.
Reanalysis of Kalina’s samples from London 2012 resulted in her testing positive for the prohibited substance Dehydrochlormethyltestosterone (turinabol). The IOC Disciplinary Commission, with Chairman Denis Oswald, and members Juan Antonio Samaranch and Uğur Erdener, decided the following:
I. The Athlete, Yulia KALINA:
(i) is found to have committed an anti-doping rule violation pursuant to the IOC Anti-Doping Rules applicable to the Games of the XXX Olympiad in London in 2012 (presence, and/or use, of a Prohibited Substance or its Metabolites or Markers in an athlete’s bodily specimen);
(ii) is disqualified from the event in which she participated upon the occasion of the Olympic Games London 2012, namely the 58kg weightlifting event, in which she placed third;
(iii) has the bronze medal, the diploma and the medallist pin obtained in the 58kg weightlifting event withdrawn, and is ordered to return these.
II. The IWF is requested to modify the results of the above-mentioned event accordingly and to consider any further action within its own competence.
III. The Ukrainian Olympic Committee shall ensure full implementation of this decision.
IV. This decision enters into force immediately.
The reanalyses on samples collected during the Olympic Games Beijing and 2008 and London 2012 were notably performed with improved analytical methods, in order to possibly detect prohibited substances that could not be identified by the analysis performed at the time of conduct of these Summer Olympic Games, claimed IOC.