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Court clears Bulgarian lifter Tsagaev to compete
ATTENTION - ADDS quotes /// SYDNEY, Sept 25 (AFP) - Bulgarian weightlifter Alan Tsagaev was given the all-clear to compete in the 105kg division on Monday after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) lifted a ban imposed on the country's Olympic squad following three drug positives. Tsagaev, who was born in Russia, took his case to the court after the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) banned him and two other "clean" lifters from the Olympics after three Bulgarian medallists tested positive for a banned diuretic. The IWF kicked out the whole squad under its "three strikes and out" policy without giving the Bulgarians the option to pay a 50,000 US dollar fine. IWF vice-president Sam Coffa said at the time that the Bulgarian case was "totally different" from an earlier Romanian drug scandal as it came during Olympic competition. The Romanian Olympic Committee paid the fine to allow its "clean" athletes to compete after three lifters tested positive for anabolic steroids in pre-Olympic tests. France's Jan Paulsson, Thomas Lee of Malaysia and Stephan Netzle of Switzerland heard Tsagaev's case on behalf of CAS in Sydney on Monday morning. They held that the decision of the IWF to suspend the Bulgarian Weightlifting Federation lacked a legal basis. "Under the IWF Anti-Doping Policy, the IWF should have imposed a fine of 50,000 US dollars on the national federation first and then, only in the event of non-payment of the fine, suspended the federation for a period of one year," the CAS said in a statement. "This rule was applied in the case of the Romanian Weightlfiting Federation but not in the case of the Bulgarian Federation. "The explanation given by the IWF to the International Olympic Committee was not that the suspension and exclusion was based on non-payment of such a fine, but rather on the positive tests of the three athletes. This is not a ground for such a decision under the IWF's own rules." Tsagaev weighed in for the 105kg competition but the IWF had still to confirm if the Bulgarian federation had paid the fine to allow him to compete following the decision by CAS. But Zdravkei Aodnordinovi, a spokeswoman for the Bulgarian team, said the court had ruled the team did not have to pay the fine. "It was just unfair," Aodnordinovi said. "It is not necessary to pay the fine because of the finding of the court." Izabela Dragneva, the first women's weightlifting gold medallist, Ivan Ivanov, silver medallist in the 56kg category, and 62kg bronze medallist Sevdalin Minchev were all stripped of their medals after testing positive for a diuretic. Diuretics are commonly used by weightlifters to lose weight to meet category limits.
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