Seven more Russian weightlifters, including two who have already been stripped of Olympic medals, were charged with doping offenses on Friday, bringing the total from the country to 12 this week, officials said.
The seven were Dimitriy Lapikov, Chingiz Mogushkov, Adam Maligov, Magomed Abuev and Maksim Sheyko, as well as female lifters Nadezda Evstyukhina and Yuliya Konovalova, the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) said.
Lapikov and Evstyukhina have previously served doping bans and been stripped of their 2008 Olympic Games bronze medals.
All have been provisionally suspended as the fallout from the McLaren report into state-backed doping in Russia continues.
On Tuesday, five Russian lifters, including a 2012 Olympic bronze medalist, were also provisionally suspended after tests on samples recovered from Moscow’s anti-doping laboratory.
Ruslan Albegov, who took a London Games bronze in the over-105kg category and won back-to-back world titles in the next two years, was suspended along with women’s under-63kg 2013 world champion Tima Turieva.
The World Anti-Doping Agency in April said it had retrieved 2,262 samples from Moscow’s former drug-testing laboratory and last month said that about 300 Russian athletes suspected of doping had been identified.
To date, only two federations — the International Biathlon Federation and the IWF — have suspended athletes on the basis of that data.
After the International Olympic Committee placed weightlifting under surveillance in March following a slew of doping cases, the IWF stepped up its anti-doping efforts.
Even so, the agency last month said that unless the federations take action on data showing doping infringements it would reserve the right to take matters to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
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