Armenian lifter gets Olympic silver after Belarusian fails doping test

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenian weightlifter Tigran Martirosyan got a silver upgrade after Andrei Rybakou of Belarus was stripped of his medal from the 2008 Beijing Olympics due to failed retests of his doping sample.

At the Olympics back in 2008, Martirosyan lifted 177 kg in the snatch, 203 kg in the clean & jerk and 380 kg in the total. He won a bronze medal.

The International Olympic Committee on Thursday, October 27 disqualified a number of athletes, including three Kazakh weightlifters, who won gold at the London 2012 Games, as well as Marina Shkermankova of Belarus who took bronze, .

Russian weightlifter Besik Kudokov who won a silver in London also failed a doping test but the medal was not taken away because he died in 2013.

The IOC has said that at least 98 competitors failed drug tests from Beijing and London after a new analysis was carried out on more than 1,240 samples using improved equipment.