International Olympic warns against excluding weightlifting from 2024 games

The president of the German International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, warned yesterday that weightlifting could be excluded from the Olympic Games scheduled for Paris in 2024, if the International Federation continues to ignore the needed reforms in the fight against doping and governance.

"The situation is getting more serious," Bach said at the conclusion of a meeting of the IOC Executive Committee. "The IOC Executive Committee has expressed its grave concern about the lack of significant changes in management and culture within the International Weightlifting Federation."

He added, "Many of the changes requested by the International Olympic Committee and the International Examination Agency (the agency that the International Weightlifting Federation has entrusted with its anti-doping program) and by independent experts have been ignored by the International Weightlifting Federation despite our warnings.

"Therefore, the Executive Committee wants to be very clear by saying that if these changes are not made in a satisfactory and timely manner, they will have to consider the place of weightlifting in the Paris Olympic program and the upcoming Olympic Games," Bach warned.

Weightlifting has been rocked for years by a series of positive tests for doping, as well as by accusations of corruption, which made the International Federation for several years under the eyes of the International Olympic Committee, which had previously threatened to exclude him from the Olympic Authority.

Despite the departure of its controversial Hungarian boss Tamas Ajan, the International Weightlifting Federation scandals over doping continue.

At the end of last October, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) published an investigation that 18 quadrants from six countries were suspected of providing fake urine samples in collusion with "surrogates" of similar athletes during doping tests.

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