The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) is effectively allowing Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Belarus only two places each at Tokyo 2020 – as the new rules state that any nation with 20 or more doping violations from 2008 to 2020 will have just one man and one woman at the Games.
Furthermore:
Countries with 10-19 doping violations over that same period will be limited to two men and two women in Tokyo. At least nine more countries, including Bulgaria, Iran and India, who have won five weightlifting golds at the Commonwealth Games, fall into that category.
- Since 2018 Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Belarus and Armenia have had more than 130 official doping positives
- China had 7
- 3 positives during the 18-month qualifying period for Tokyo, qualifies for a country ban
- athletes have to compete 6 times during that time.
It is going to be interesting to see if these strict policies (on paper) has any effect on the totals in Tokyo.
There aren’t enough comps for this, at least for senior lifters? If we take a CHN lifter as an example:
2018 WWC
2019 AWC (overlaps with nationals)
2019 WWC
2020 AWC (overlaps with nationals)
No AG for him/her this year, so that’s four. This system would require several mandatory Grand Prixs or similar open comps.
AND that’s only assuming the best lifter is always the same each year which especially in China isn’t always the case. If the person sent to the 2018 WWC is injured in 2019 what then? The replacement may be equally good but is missing even more comps now.
It’s insane. If your one lifter gets injured after racking up half their qualifications, you’re screwed. The only solution is to send the same handful of lifters to every comp, which is terrible because it robs “off” candidates of competition time and forces lifters and coaches to decide if they want to gamble and win a WWC medal at the risk of injury or training interruption.
weightlifting will be irrelevant sport in 2020 Olympics if this rule goes through IMO.
Will this semi extreme measure stops athletes and discourages federation in systematic doing?
Chinese and Kazakhstan and many other weightlifting federations will lose their funding because their athletes can not participate in Olympics.
What are you doing folks?
This is weightlifting. Are you going to destroy it?
that’s smart, now they’re going to dope even more, to insure a medal….
this is a pathetic attempt to discourage dopers ? this will only give more medal to Asia.
6 times in 18 months?? That doesn’t make sense. That has to be a typo. What weightlifter competes once per 3 months for 18 months?
This is fantastic news for the countries that have strict doping policies in place. It would be wonderful to see clean lifters on the podium. Weightlifting has to be the most dramatic sport at the Olympic games. The general public do not care if totals are down 50+kgs what they want to see is underdogs winning and heavier than the average man weights being lifted. Checkout the most recent Commonwealth Games 94kg and 105+class winning lifts. Full of drama and the best part is they are clean athletes!! Be interesting to see which countries produce the best weightlifters in the future.
well, I see no problems weightlifiters having competitions more often. lots of then shows PR in midia social during all over the year.
Roberto, they need to lose weight and they need to fly out, disturbing their sleep cycle and their training routine. Competing 6 times in 18 months is absolute bull, designed to mess up elite lifters. Doing PRs in training for social media is completely irrelevant; they lift every day at home without cutting weight for their routines. By your logic, since they lift every day, it shouldn’t’ be a problem for them to compete every day, right? LOL
Hello Victor, asking your question; no, i dont think that since they lift everyday, so they should compete everyday. And I agree about everything you wrote about the stress of cutting weight and most of all the mental stress of competitions. But I do not think that competing 6 times in 18 months is something impossible, most lifters have the nationals, continental, world’s and sometimes provincial or commercial competitions in 12 months, and of course that they will not be in top condititons everyday, but that is their job. However I see your point, some countries have different ways of periodization, preparing the lifter for two or one major competition a year, however in this interview http://www.chidlovski.net/liftup/a_interview_abadzhiev_111999.asp Abadjiev told his lifters competing 10 times a year, in the other spectrum Ruslan Nurudinov took one year of rest, and even Ilya Ilin take longs break of training. So you see this is a complex situation, not everybody will benefit in this case. I just think that IWF wants to give an answer for COI, remember that they want to bann weightlifting from olympics.