London Olympics medal winner Modzmanashvili fails new doping test

Olympic medal-winning freestyle wrestler Davit Modzmanashvili has tested positive for the steroid turinabol after new analysis of samples from the 2012 London games, the International Olympic Committee announced on Thursday.

Tiblisi-born Modzmanashvili won silver for Georgia in the 120kg weight class in London before switching to Uzbekistan in 2017.

His positive test comes after the IOC announced in November that reanalyses of samples from the 2012 games -- using "the latest scientific analysis methods" -- were under way.

This reanalysis programme has revealed more than fifty positive cases and led to the removal of some twenty medals from the London Olympics, while during the Games only a dozen positive cases were discovered.

Modzmanashvili was banned for two years in 2008 and stripped of that year's European title after testing positive for a banned substance.

In 2016 he was banned for and then cleared of testing positive for meldonium, the same substance for which Maria Sharapova was suspended the same year.