FILE PHOTO: Athletics – World Athletics Championships – Men’s Hammer Throw Final – London Stadium, London, Britain – August 11, 2017. Dilshod Nazarov of Tajikistan in action. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez/File Photo
(Reuters) – Olympic hammer champion Dilshod Nazarov of Tajikistan has been provisionally suspended by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) after a sample from eight years ago tested positive for a banned steroid.
The AIU, which oversees integrity issues in international athletics — including doping — said Nazarov’s sample from the 2011 world athletics championships in Daegu, South Korea, contained a metabolite of oral turinabol.
The 37-year-old, who is set to miss the worlds starting in Doha on Friday, had finished 10th in the competition in 2011 before bagging a silver medal four years later in Beijing.
Nazarov clinched the Olympic title in Rio 2016 to win a first gold medal for the Central Asian country since it gained independence with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
In its latest list here of provisional suspensions released on Tuesday, the AIU said Bahrain’s Kenyan-born distance runner Albert Rop had been charged with whereabouts failures.
Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in Bengaluru; editing by Amlan Chakraborty