The international wrestling community is once again looking at a group of Olympic medalists allegedly testing positive for banned substances. The three latest culprits are 2008 Greco-Roman medalists Khasan Baroev (Russia), Asset Mambetov (Kazakhstan) and Vitaliy Rahimov (Azerbaijan). Six of the 72 medals from Beijing have now been either stripped or not awarded.

A decision was announced by the IOC to sanction the athletes and disqualify their results from the Beijing Games. Baroev was the gold medalist at 120kg in Athens back in 2004, and also won world titles in 2003 and 2006. He is known as one of the few losses Mijain Lopez has ever suffered.

Rahimov followed his (now stripped) Olympic silver with bronze medals at the 2009 and 2010 world championships. His medal would theoretically be transferred to Nurbakyt Tengizbayev of Kazakhstan, in turn giving the 60kg bronze medal to Sheng Jiang of China.

Mambetov's 96kg bronze medal is the only he ever won at either the Olympics or world championships, though he did take a silver at the 2010 Asian Games. His medal should be given now to Marec Svec of the Czech Republic. The news of Mambetov broke on the official National Olympic Committee website of Kazakhstan, which he then denied on the website of the Kazakhstan Wrestling Federation.

Per the IOC documents, it is the responsibility of United World Wrestling to "modify the results and consider any further action." These three join the likes of Soslan Tigiev and Taimuraz Tigiyev as wrestlers losing their medals from Beijing. This follows the news in August that Artur Taymazov and Besik Kudukhov also tested positive, though the late Kudukhov could not object the ruling and will not have his medal officially stripped due to his passing.

The complete IOC decisions for these athletes can be found below.

Khasan Baroev


Assset Mambetov


Rahimov