Vietnamese weightlifter Nguyen Thi Kim Van, 25, was confirmed the winner of two golds and a bronze medal at the women’s +75kg event of the 2013 Asian Weightlifting Championship after the champion was stripped of the title for testing positive for drug use.
At the tournament held in June in Astana, Kazakhstan, Van ranked second in both the clean and jerk event of 106kg and the double event of snatch and clean and jerk of 242kg.
Her results were far behind those of Kazakh champion Alexandra Aborneva with a clean and jerk of 110kg, a snatch of 143kg, and a double event of 253kg.
However, Aborneva was stripped of the gold medal after testing positive for the banned substance dehydrochlormethyl testosterone and her titles were later awarded to Kim Van of Vietnam, said Do Dinh Khanh, head of the Vietnam weightlifting unit.
Besides the two gold medals, Van was also awarded a bronze medal in the snatch event after being moved up from fourth to third place.
Van is now the first weightlifter of Vietnam to win Asian championship titles, according to Khang. This is encouraging, although strong rivals from South Korea and China didn’t take part in the competition.
In the men’s 85kg category, Hoang Tan Tai of Vietnam moved up to win a silver and a bronze medal after three leading athletes of Iran, Iraq, and Kazakhstan tested positive for drug use.
In the men’s 94kg, Vietnamese weightlifter Tran Van Hoa was awarded two bronze medals for the same reason.
Around 30 winners at the 2013 Asian Weightlifting Championship were stripped of their titles for using banned drugs.