3 athletes stripped of Olympic medals due to failure in reanalysis

Three Olympic medallists were ordered to return their medals at the 2008 and 2012 Games after testing positive for the prohibited substances in reanalysis, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced on Wednesday.

Artur Taymazov of Uzbekistan, who won gold in the Men's 96-120kg Freestyle wrestling event of the Beijing Olympic Games, was tested positive for turinabol and stanozolol.

Another wrestler stripped of his Olympic medal was Ukraine's Vasyl Fedoryshyn, silver medallist in the Men's 55-60kg Freestyle wrestling event in 2008, as his sample resulted in a positive test of turinabol.

Russian weightlifter Svetlana Tzarukaeva had to return her silver medal won in the 63kg event of the 2012 London Olympic Games, also as a result of testing positive for turinabol.

IOC stored athletes' doping samples for 10 years, and over 1,000 samples from 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games have been retested with improved analytical methods.