In an article published by InsideTheGames.biz, it states that nine countries, including Russia and China, will be banned from the 2017 IWF World Championships to be held later this year. The article says that “a three-man Commission” will meet again in Budapest this weekend to finalize their proposal and will present their proposal on how to handle the nine countries in question at the IWF Executive Board meeting in November.

The nine countries all have at least positive drug tests as part of last year’s International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) reanalysis testing during the months leading up to the Olympic Games. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) gave the IWF the green light to suspend the countries, but said that each case should be handled separately because of the varying degrees of positive tests.

The nine countries in question are: Russia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Turkey and China. Russia and Kazakhstan both have 10 positive tests.

This comes at a time where the IWF must present how Olympic Weightlifting will handle the rampant doping problem in the sport to the IOC or possibly face being removed from the Olympics.

TASS Says IWF Did Not Suspend Russia

Following the InsideTheGames publication, TASS, a Russian media outlet, said that the IWF “officially dismissed” that the Russian team has been suspended. In an interview with a TASS reporter, an IWF spokesman said, “If there is any official development or a decision it will be communicated to the Russian Weightlifting Federation directly.”

Stay tuned as there will likely be a lot more discussion over the next few months around these nine countries and how the IWF will present their strategy to clean up the sport of weightlifting.