Olympics shame: Eight years after 2008 Beijing Games, four athletes stripped of medals

Lausanne: Eight years later, more athletes continue to be stripped of medals from the Beijing Olympics because of positive doping tests.

Four athletes, including three Russians, had their medals taken away today after their doping samples from 2008 were retested and came back positive for banned drugs.

A total of six athletes -- one runner and five weightlifters -- were sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee based on reanalysis of their samples with improved techniques. They were among the 98 positive cases recorded in the retesting of more than 1,000 samples from Beijing and the 2012 London Olympics.

Russian runner Tatyana Firova was stripped of her silver medal in the women's 4x400-meter relay after testing positive for turinabol and a cocktail of other steroids, the IOC said. She also had her ninth-place finish in the individual 400 meters annulled.

Russia had already been stripped of the relay medal earlier this month when another runner, Anastasia Kapachinskaya, tested positive. Jamaica is in line to move up from third to silver and Belarus from fourth to bronze in the 4x400 relay.

Russia also previously lost the Beijing gold medal in the 4x100 relay after Yulia Chermoshanskaya failed a retest of her samples.

The IOC stores samples for 10 years to allow them to be reanalyzed when improved methods become available. The new tests can detect the use of steroids going back weeks and months, rather than days.

Also today, Russian weightlifter Marina Shainova was stripped of her silver medal in the 58-kilogram class. The IOC said she tested positive for stanozolol and turinabol. Another Russian, Nadezda Evstyukhina, had her bronze medal in the 75kg weightlifting division taken away after her samples came back positive for turinabol and EPO.

The bronze medal in the men's 69kg weightlifting class was stripped from Armenia's Tigram Martirosyan, who tested positive for stanozolol and turinabol.

Also disqualified were weightlifters Alexandru Dudoglo of Moldova (ninth place in the 69kg division) and Intigam Zairov of Azerbaijan (ninth place in the 85kg class). Dudoglo tested positive for stanozolol, Zairov for turinabol.