Russia's weightlifting team has been barred from competing at the Rio Olympics in August over doping offenses, the sport's governing federation has announced.
The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) said that some of the Russian competitors had been named in a report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency which documented widespread, state-sponsored doping of Russian athletes.
"The integrity of the weightlifting sport has been seriously damaged on multiple times and levels by the Russians," the IWF said in a statement on July 29. "Therefore an appropriate sanction was applied in order to preserve the status of the sport."
