Doping: Weightlifting coach banned for life, Tokyo 2020 medallist suspended

The International Weightlifting Federation’s (IWF) decision to toughen up on doping by handing over all procedures to the International Testing Agency (ITA) has led to a Ukrainian coach being banned from the sport for life.

Insidethegames.biz reports that punishing coaches was unheard of when the IWF policed doping itself, but this is the third time since the IWF-ITA deal was signed in October in  2020 that a coach has been kicked out of weightlifting.

The Egyptian Khaled Korany was banned just over two years ago, and the Thailand coach Liu Ning, from China, was next to go last May.

Now Matsokha Mykhailo has been given a life ban for “tampering and complicity” in relation to an offence by his athlete Dmytro Chumak, a triple European champion for Ukraine and a multiple medallist at the IWF World Championships at weights ranging from 94 kilograms to 109kg.

Chumak, 32, sixth at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, is provisionally suspended after being charged with evading testers and attempted bribery in May 2021.

The ITA has also revealed that another medallist from the re-arranged 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo has been provisionally suspended – Anton Pliesnoi from Georgia – and that Pakistan’s top lifter, the Olympian Talha Talib, has accepted a three-year suspension.

Current suspensions, provisional or confirmed, feature on a new page on the ITA’s website rather than on the IWF’s site, which will continue to list historic sanctions.

It is all part of a new approach to anti-doping by the IWF, whose President Mohamed Jalood said last month,”We have put our full confidence in and trust the work of the ITA. 

“We want a clean sport and the ITA will help us in that.”