2008 Beijing Summer Olympics

Bulgarian Olympic Committee (BOC) has decided to pull out Bulgaria’s national weightlifting team from the upcoming summer Olympics in Beijing on August 8-24.

The news came after an ad hoc session of BOC, held on June 30 2008, BOC’s head Stefka Kostadinova (no relation) said in a statement on BOC’s webiste.

The entire team of eleven top Bulgarian weightlifters, three females and eight males, tested positive on June 8-9 during a training session of Bulgaria’s national weightlifting team in Assenovgrad, southern Bulgaria.

The results from the second samples of the athletes will be announced on July 22-23, but “in my professional career as an athlete I have never heard of a case when the second sample result differ from the first one,” Kostadinova said.

Although both the athletes and their coaches expressed their astonishment at the positive test, if the second sample result proves positive, BOC might impose a two-year ban on the Bulgarian Weightlifting Federation, end its funding and impose sanctions on coaches and officials, Kostadinova said.

The federation has received about five million leva in funding over the last four years, Kostadinova said.

Although initially Kostadinova said that she hoped that Bulgaria could sent replacements to the Olympics, BOC decided on July 1 not to field a weightlifting team in Beijing.