With five Gold medals in the Commonwealth Games 2018, India’s weightlifters could actually have a golden chance to mine the yellow metal in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
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With five Gold medals in the Commonwealth Games 2018, India’s weightlifters could actually have a golden chance to mine the yellow metal in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
In fact, given the abysmal record of the country with a 120 billion plus population at the ‘greatest stage of them all’, it shouldn’t be a surprise if India’s Gold comes from that event alone.
But a recent decision taken by the International Wrestling Federation (IWF) might rob the country of its ‘golden’ hope.
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Under the International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved policy, nations with 10-19 doping violations from 2008 to 2020 will be able to send only four contenders divided equally between male and female to the 2020 Olympics. And one of the nine nations in that category is India. Others include Bulgaria, Iran, Ukraine, Moldova and Turkey.
The IWF has restricted the number of players from Russia to just two because of the country’s notorious record of over 20 doping violations. Other nations who have been handed the same restriction are Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Belarus.
According to Firstpost, the governing body for wrestling may go for further restrictions, including a ban from the Games, if more violations occur from the countries already under the scanner up till April 2020 – the qualifying period.
China, which has just 7 violations, is among the countries with less than 10 violations which will get 8 spots at the Games.
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