September 6, 2016
Wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt will not be getting his London Olympics medal upgraded to gold.
The sport’s governing body, the United World Wrestling (UWW), confirmed on Tuesday that the 2012 gold medallist in the 60kg freestyle category, Toghrul Asgarov of Azerbaijan, has not committed any dope violation.
September 6, 2016
Wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt will not be getting his London Olympics medal upgraded to gold.
The sport’s governing body, the United World Wrestling (UWW), confirmed on Tuesday that the 2012 gold medallist in the 60kg freestyle category, Toghrul Asgarov of Azerbaijan, has not committed any dope violation.
“Contrary to news reports, 2012 Olympic gold medalist Togrul ASGAROV (AZE) has never been in violation of UWW’s anti-doping policy (sic),” tweeted the world body from its official Twitter handle.
Sources had claimed last week that Asgarov’s sample, taken and stored during the London Games and reanalyzed as part of World Anti-doping Agency’s (WADA’s) and the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC’s) retrospective testing programme, had returned positive.
Dutt, who had won bronze in London, is likely to be awarded the silver medal after the original silver medallist, Besik Kudukhov of Russia, who died in a car crash in 2013, tested positive for a banned substance earlier.
The Haryana grappler defeated Franklin Gomez of Puerto Rico, Masoud Esmaeilpour of Iran and Ri Jong-Myong of North Korea in the repechage rounds to claim the bronze medal at the 2012 Games.
The IOC was re-testing samples collected from the Beijing and London Olympics using enhanced techniques to expose dope cheats. Under WADA’s revised norms, samples taken for dope tests from international tournaments are now being stored in deep freeze up to 10 years in order to allow the use of advanced technology, available with the passage of time, to catch dope cheats to ensure that “the clean athletes get justice even if it comes a bit late”.
Courtesy: HT
