Four athletes stripped of medals from 2008 Beijing Games

Four more athletes have been stripped of past Olympic medals in the ongoing effort to re-test doping samples kept in storage from the 2012 London Games and 2008 Beijing Games.

Once again, the big losers were the embattled sport of weightlifting and the country of Russia, which continues to deal with fallout from reports of long-term, systemic doping.

The International Olympic Committee announced Wednesday that three Russians and an Armenian had been stripped of medals they won in 2008. Three of the four were weightlifters; the other was a 400-meter runner.

Olympic leaders have used improved analytical methods to re-examine more than 1,200 London and Beijing test samples, some of which have been kept in storage almost a decade. The campaign has netted 98 positive results.

Tatyana Firova of Russia was among the sanctioned medalists. She was part a second-place 1,600-meter relay team that was previously disqualified when the sample from another member, Anastasia Kapachinskaya, tested positive.

The other sanctioned medalists were weightlifters Tigran Martirosyan of Armenia and Nadezda Evstyukhina and Marina Shainova of Russia.

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