Romania Banned from Olympic Weightlifting in Tokyo over Doping

Romania is banned from taking part in the Olympic weightlifting in Tokyo over doping. The country was banned for 1 year, but the sanction can be lifted earlier, in February, if the Romanian Federation agrees to pay a 50,000 USD fine and no other Romanian athlete breaks the anti-doping rules before the term.

Besides, four Romanian weightlifters are disqualified for past doping cases. One of them lost his Olympic medal won in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro.

Romania was once one of the international forces in weightlifting. Have you heard about the Romanian deadlift? The expression comes from the fact that the procedure was firstly used by Nicu Vlad, one of the great Romanian weightlifters. He won gold, silver, and bronze medals during the international competitions and he was a heavy weightlifter superstar in the ’80s.

He used to lift the weight in a different manner and the opponents started using the technique, thus offering the name Romanian to the newly invented deadlift technique.

Those days are gone and the fact that the Romanian athletes were caught red-handed shows that the new generations of weightlifters are far from the qualities of any Olympic athlete. Thus, Romania joins a shameful list of countries that were banned from the weightlifting competition in Tokyo, such as Egypt, Malaysia, and Thailand.