IWF lifts temporary suspensions of two Russian athletes

The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) ruled to lift provisional suspensions of two Russian weightlifters imposed last year over doping abuse allegations, Russian sports lawyer Artyom Patsev said on Tuesday.

Ruslan Albegov, the 2012 Olympics bronze medallist and two-time European and World champion, was temporarily suspended as of November 13, 2017, and Oleg Chen was suspended last month.

Both suspensions were imposed on suspicion of anti-doping rules violations, reports Tass news agency.

"Specialists from Clever Consult legal agency managed to obtain the lift of provisional suspensions imposed on Russian weightlifters Ruslan Albegov and Oleg Chen, accused of anti-doping rules violations based on supplementary documents to the McLaren report," Patsev wrote in his Facebook account.

"The provisional suspensions were imposed by the International Weightlifting Federation within the frames of the ongoing investigation," Patsev said.

"The arguments provided by Clever Consult convinced the IWF that the imposed suspensions were unfair and needed to be lifted."

The IWF Executive Board ruled at its session in Bucharest on September 30 to suspend the Russian Weightlifting Federation as well as eight other national weightlifting federations for the period of one year.

The suspensions followed after the re-analysis of doping samples of many weightlifters from the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics tested positive for banned performance-enhancing drugs.

--IANS

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