News and Articles related to Bulgaria
Current date: 2010-02-09 08:39

Bulgarian weight lifters’ B-probes come back positive

The lab in Cologne and the International weight lifting federation found the 11 Bulgarian lifters’ B-probes to contain doping substances. Vesela Lecheva, chairwoman of the State Agency for Youth and Sports, expects the directors of the Bulgarian weight lifting federation to resign.

The reputable German lab e-mailed the probe results to the BWLF. The probes contained metandienone, an anabolic steroid. BWLF president Anton Kodjabashev reacted by turning his phone off.

The International federation will set the deadlines for disqualification of the lifters and fine the Bulgarian federation. After the positive A-probes Kodjabashev and Tencho Tenev, secretary general of the BWLF, issued a statement that the national men’s and women’s teams would be disqualified from the Olympics.

Bulgarian Olympic Committee chair Stefka Kostadinova did not approve of this move, yet admitted that it would be pointless to send poorly trained replacements to Beijing. A few hours before the B-probe confirmation Lecheva stated that it is the moral duty of the directors of the Bulgarian weight lifting federation to resign.

“We met with the Bulgarian doping commission yesterday and discussed the positive probes of the lifters,” she commented. “We requested the stance of the World anti-doping agency, which will deliver one within 2 weeks. They will determine the sanctions against the BWLF and the lifters. We need to be careful about choosing measures, because this could mean the end of lifting in Bulgaria. There are two solutions. One is for everyone to keep quiet. The other is to take away the federation’s license. We must choose the right one because we want this sport to improve and for such grave and ugly incidents to stop. We expect the BWLF to propose measures to help us out of this Catch 22.”