ERMEK MARZHIKPAEV: DOPING SCANDALS IN WEIGHTLIFTING NEED TO BE DEALED
November 28, 2023
The Minister of Tourism and Sports met with the leaders and coaching staff of the weightlifting federation. During the meeting, representatives of this sport summed up the performance of our athletes at the Asian Games, and also introduced plans for the development of weightlifting.
In Hangzhou, the Kazakhstan team won only 1 bronze medal, despite promising to win 1 silver and 2 bronze medals.
Ermek Marzhikpayev raised a pressing issue with the situation that has developed with weightlifting athletes recently. Since the beginning of 2022, 43 positive cases of doping among athletes have been recorded.
Due to doping scandals before the Asian Games, there was a complete renewal of the coaching staff and leadership of the federation. As a result, the national team performed in Hangzhou without the main squad.
Representatives of the National Anti-Doping Center, together with the Center for Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation, are conducting research on samples of sports nutrition and pharmacological drugs to determine the reasons for the mass suspension of athletes.
“We have a very rich history and good traditions in weightlifting. Because of the incident, you can’t just give up this sport. The new management and coaching staff need to understand the reasons for the positive doping tests and develop an action plan for “zero” tolerance to the use of prohibited substances,” said the Minister of Tourism and Sports.
The head of the department also gave a number of instructions to representatives of the weightlifting federation: to exclude athletes from independently purchasing sports nutrition and recovery aids, to develop, together with all interested departments, an algorithm for the purchase of pharmacological drugs, to launch a separate program for training athletes in absolute weights, and much more.