RIO DE JANEIRO: While the scourge of doping has delivered yet another blow to weightlifting’s tarnished reputation at the Rio Olympics, one of the sport’s most experienced coaches and administrators remains hopeful of a bright, clean future.
Paul Coffa, the general secretary of the Oceania Weightlifting Federation, who has been involved in the sport for more than half a century, said catching and banning drugs cheats before Rio was “a big break for weightlifting”.
Bulgaria’s weightlifters could not compete in Rio after the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) banned the country’s athletes following a high number of doping cases.
Russia were also absent for “bringing weightlifting into disrepute”.
Six 2012 champions were excluded from Rio because of doping, including four from Kazakhstan and one from Poland. Two Poles were among the four weightlifting positives announced in the past 10 days. Of the 29 positives announced from reanalysis of 2008 and 2012 samples, 26 were from the pre-1989 Eastern Bloc.
In 2015, the IWF also banned weightlifters from Brazil, China, Egypt, Colombia, Egypt, India, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Mexico, Korea, Seychelles, Taiwan, Tunisia and Turkey while athletes from countries such as Argentina, Iran, Chile and Iceland were also suspended.
Despite the problems, Coffa said the sport was heading in the right direction.
“Weightlifting is a beautiful sport,” the 74-year-old told Reuters. “If you take drugs away it would be sensational, the balance of medals would go to so many different countries, not the way it is at the moment. I believe that will happen.”
There were signs of it happening already in Rio.
The number of countries winning medals was 22, only one fewer than the all-time record set in 2000, the year when women’s contests were added to the Olympic programme.
The diversity of the sport was on full display for large, noisy and appreciative crowds at the 6,000-capacity arena during an entertaining and incident-filled 10 days of competition.
There was an Arab woman on the podium, a champion from Uzbekistan, a medal for Kyrgyzstan, a vegan competing for the United States and a lifter from Kiribati trying to raise awareness of global warming by dancing on and off stage.
A Colombian cried for five minutes after winning gold, Egypt won their first men’s medal since 1948, the United States their first medal in the sport since 2000.
And in the final contest of the Games, a 145kg super-heavyweight from Turkmenistan was reduced to tears after three failures, and security personnel were called to the arena when Iranian coaches reacted angrily to a judges decision.
Despite its doping problems, weightlifting is growing in popularity.
“Our membership numbers have risen from 11,000 to 26,000 between the last Olympics and these Games,” said Phil Andrews, chief executive of USA Weightlifting, who predicted the bronze medal won by American Sarah Robles would be a boost back home.
“Our medal will help to promote the sport.”
Coffa said he believed there will be tougher sanctions from the IWF in future and that the threat of being caught through retrospective testing would be another deterrent.
Five Olympic champions from Kazakhstan will lose their 2008 and 2012 medals due to retests.
