MONACO (AP) — Olympic hammer throw champion Dilshod Nazarov of Tajikistan has been banned for two years in a doping case and will not be able to defend his title at the Tokyo Games, the Athletics Integrity Unit said Thursday.
Nazarov was handed a two-year ban backdated to September 2019.
That was when Nazarov was first provisionally suspended after a retest of his sample from the 2011 world championships came back positive for the banned steroid turinabol. Nazarov's results from August 2011 to August 2013 have also been disqualified, stripping him of the hammer title he won at the 2013 Asian championships.
Nazarov’s gold from the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games is Tajikistan’s only Olympic victory as an independent nation. He was a world championship silver medalist the year before.
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