Uzbekistan's greatest Olympian busted for doping

Artur Taymazov of Uzbekistan celebrates a gold medal at the 2012 Olympics. Photo / Getty

Uzbekistan's greatest ever Olympian Artur Taymazov has been stripped of one of his three gold medals after failing a doping test at the 2008 Games.

Taymazov, currently a Russian politician, won three of his nation's 10 Olympic medals but will have to hand back his gold from the Beijing Olympics.

He was named among three athletes stripped of Olympic medals for doping with anabolic steroids at the 2008 and 2012 Games, the International Olympic Committee said in a statement

Ukrainian wrestler Vasyl Fedoryshyn, who won silver in 2012, and Russian weightlifter Svetlana Tzarukaeva who won silver at the 2012 London Games were also asked to give their medals back.

Her disqualification leaves Canadian lifter Christine Girard in line to be upgraded from bronze to the gold medal, as the original race winner, Maiya Maneza of Kazakhstan, was disqualified last year for doping.

The IOC, which stores doping samples for 10 years, has reanalyzed more than 1,000 samples from Beijing and London with improved techniques that can detect the use of steroids going back weeks and months, rather than days.

A total of 65 sanctions have now been imposed on Olympic athletes from the Beijing Games due to retests, the IOC said.

Five of those cases were in 2009 and 59 in re-analysis last year.

Of those 65 sanctions, 40 involve medals that have been or are likely to be reallocated.

The total is 45 sanctions and 20 medals for athletes at the London Olympics, including four Russians who were targeted later as a result of an investigation by World Anti-Doping Agency investigator Richard McLaren into a state-backed doping program.

The three latest cases all involved turinabol, the steroid best known for East Germany's doping program in the 1970s and '80s.

Taymazov also tested positive for stanozolol, which sprinter Ben Johnson of Canada used at the 1988 Olympics.

Taymazov won gold in Beijing in the 96 to 120-kilogram freestyle wrestling event, beating Bakhtiyar Akhmedov of Russia in the final.

Fedoryshyn took silver in the 55 to 60-kilo freestyle wrestling class, where he lost the final to Russian Mavlet Batirov.

In London, Tzarukaeva was second in the women's 63-kilo weightlifting class, behind Maneza. Canada's Girard could be upgraded to a gold medalist by the IOC.