Albania fined for weightlifting doping

Tirana, Sept. 17 – Albania has been fined by the International Weightlifting Federation with $50,000 after three of its athletes tested positive for doping this year.
The IWF said it lifted Albania’s provisional suspension from the sport after imposing the fine at an executive board meeting last weekend in Kosice, Slovakia.
Hysen Pulaku came out positive just before the London Olympics started last July. Pulaku tested positive for the steroid stanozolol and the 19-year-old was banned for four years.
The IWF also banned Erkand Qerimaj for two years after he tested positive for the stimulant methylhexaneamine at the European Championships. He was stripped of his title in the 77-kilogram category.
The other Albanian weightlifter Ilirian Suli got a four-year ban after testing positive for the steroid methandienone.
Back in the country there has been no reaction at all on the move. Individual personalities of the country’s sport have called on the federation leaders to resign. But not such a move has been made until now, as they claim the cases have not involved them but were linked only to the sportsmen and their coaches.
That is a bad image for the country’s sport, one of its best, not to say the best it represented in the world.