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Belarus shot putter Nadezhda Ostapchuk stripped of London 2012 gold medal after failing drugs test

New Zealand shot-putter Valerie Adams is set to be crowned Olympic champion for the second successive Games after the woman who beat her to the gold medal last week, Belarus athlete Nadzeya Ostapchuk, was stripped of her title for failing a drug test.

Just a day after the Olympic flame was extinguished, the International Olympic Committee announced that Ostapchuk had tested positive for metenolone, a banned anabolic steroid.

In a statement, the IOC said the athlete had been disqualifed with immediate effect and that the process had begun to reallocate the medals.

It means Adams, the 2008 Olympic champion and three-time winner of the world title, will retain her crown, while Russia’s Evgeniia Kolodko will be promoted to the silver medal and China’s Lijiao Gong will receive the bronze.

Ostapchuck, a bronze medallist in Beijing, took the title last Monday with a winning throw of 21.36 metres, with Adams finishing second with 20.70m.

She is the 12th athlete to be excluded from the London Olympics but the first to be stripped of a medal.



An IOC statement read: "The International Olympic Committee (IOC) today announced that it has disqualified, withdrawn the medal from, and excluded Belarus's Nadzeya Ostapchuk (athletics, women's shot put) from the Games of the XXX Olympiad in London.

"The athlete was first requested to provide a urine sample for a doping control on 5 August. She competed the next day in the women's shot put event, where she placed first, and was asked to provide a sample straight after her competition.

"Both samples indicated the presence of metenolone, which is classified as anabolic agent under the 2012 Prohibited List."