(Reuters) – Russia’s five-times world champion weightlifter and Olympic medallist Tatiana Kashirina has been temporarily suspended for an anti-doping rule violation, Russian news agency TASS reported on Sunday.
Kashirina, who won silver at the 2012 Olympics and five gold medals at the world championships between 2010 and 2018, was one of the favourites for a gold medal at next year’s Tokyo Games.
The report said Kashirina, 29, was suspended after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) took results of doping tests of Russian athletes between 2012 to 2015 from the Moscow Laboratory during an investigation.
She previously served a two-year suspension from 2006-08 for violating anti-doping rules and her latest ban will prevent her from competing during the Games qualification period which runs until April, 2021.
Kashirina would have had to compete as a neutral as Russian athletes remain barred from major international events, including the Olympics, under the country’s flag until 2022.
A Swiss court upheld doping sanctions on Russia this week but halved the original four-year WADA ban.
(Reporting by Rohith Nair in Bengaluru, editing by Ed Osmond)
