IWF President Tamas Ajan has resigned his IOC Honorary Membership, while remaining fully focused on ensuring the success of weightlifting at Tokyo 2020 and beyond.

“Since the ARD TV show on weightlifting made its unfounded allegations at the beginning of the year, the work to investigate them has proven to be a time-consuming and costly exercise for the IWF. Ultimately, I continue to believe that the ongoing independent investigation will demonstrate the ARD’s allegations to be baseless where they concern the IWF and me personally.

The promotion of weightlifting and the advancement of weightlifters have been my life’s work. After leading the IWF to become one of the international sports federations with the most effective and most respected anti-doping programmes, I am determined to ensure my work and that of so many others will not be undone.

Now it is clearly vital that we maintain our focus on the success of weightlifting at Tokyo 2020. For that reason, in order to save the Olympic Movement from negative rumours and subsequent inconvenience, I have decided to resign my IOC Membership after having already served the Olympic Movement during the leadership of no less than four IOC Presidents. While looking forward to being exonerated personally, I will be concentrating only on the success of weightlifting, the sport which I love.”