Rio de Janeiro - Bronze medallist weightlifter Izzat Artykov on Thursday became the first athlete to be stripped of a Rio Olympics medal, testing positive for drugs as doping moved into the spotlight with the Games entering the final stretch.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had executed the most extensive pre-Games drugs testing plan while also re-testing hundreds of samples from the previous two Olympics in London and Beijing in an effort to root out cheats.
Despite discovering 98 positive samples in the re-tests and banning those athletes from Rio and dozens more in targeted pre-competition tests, several more athletes were caught at the Games.
Artykov, from Kyrgyzstan, tested positive for strychnine after placing third in the men's 69kg category, with the international federation and the IOC in charge of redistributing his medal.
Moldovan paddler Serghei Tarnovschi, who won bronze in the canoe sprint, was provisionally suspended from the Olympics and will miss out on the C2M 1000 metres where he was set to compete with his brother Oleg.
The 19-year-old Tarnovschi was told on Thursday he had failed a pre-Games test.
The International Canoe Federation (ICF) told Reuters the status of Tarnovschi's medal would be determined by an IOC-led hearing later in the week.
