Athletics-Olympic hammer champion Nazarov handed provisional doping ban

Olympic hammer champion Dilshod Nazarov of Tajikistan has been provisionally suspended by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) after a sample from eight years ago tested positive for a banned steroid. The AIU, which oversees integrity issues in international athletics -- including doping -- said Nazarov's sample from the 2011 world athletics championships in Daegu, South Korea, contained a metabolite of oral turinabol.

The 37-year-old, who is set to miss the worlds starting in Doha on Friday, had finished 10th in the competition in 2011 before bagging a silver medal four years later in Beijing. Nazarov clinched the Olympic title in Rio 2016 to win a first gold medal for the Central Asian country since it gained independence with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

In its latest list https://www.athleticsintegrity.org/disciplinary-process/provisional-suspensions-in-force of provisional suspensions released on Tuesday, the AIU said Bahrain's Kenyan-born distance runner Albert Rop had been charged with whereabouts failures.