Monday, August 29, 2016

Report: Romania’s Gabriel Sincraian, Rio 85kg Bronze Medalist, Fails Doping Test

According to Romanian language media outlet Stiripesurse.ro, Rio Bronze Medalist Gabriel Sincraian has tested positive for a banned substance and will subsequently lose his medal and award; the exact nature of the substance hasn’t been released, and the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) hasn’t yet announced the positive test via their standard Public Disclosure protocol. The Stiripesurse.ro quotes Romanian public broadcast channel TVR as a primary source.

Sincraian originally placed third in the men’s 85kg class at the 2016 Olympic Games behind Iran’s Kianoush Rostami and China’s Tian Tao. Rostami set a new World Record in the Total on his way to gold, while Tao secured silver after only making two of six attempts during the competition.

The 27 year-old Sincraian placed second earlier this year at the European Weightlifting Championships and also competed in the 2012 London Olympic Games. Assuming the report is accurate and Sincraian loses his medal, the bronze will go to Kazakhstan’s Denis Ulanov, who originally placed fourth overall in the weight class.

Sincraian is the second Rio Olympic weightlifting medalist to test positive for banned substances. Just days after the conclusion of the 2016 Games, the IWF announced Kyrgyzstan’s Izzat Artykov had tested positive for strychnine, which can be used as a stimulant. Polish brothers Tomasz and Adrian Zielinski were in Rio but disqualified before competition began after they both tested positive from samples collected earlier this summer.

The report on Sincraian — which, again, has yet to be confirmed by the IWF — comes less than a week after samples from 15 weightlifters at the Beijing Olympics came back positive for banned substances. As a result of those retests and others conducted earlier this summer, several countries are facing year-long bans from international weightlifting, including Kazakhstan, Russia, China, and Belarus.

A video of Sincraian’s performance from the 2015 World Weightlifting Championships in Houston is embedded below.

Featured image: barsophi1‘s YouTube Channel

The post Report: Romania’s Gabriel Sincraian, Rio 85kg Bronze Medalist, Fails Doping Test appeared first on BarBend.

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