Middle-Heavyweight (≤94 kilograms), Men

As the defending Olympic Champion, the reigning World Champion (with additional titles in 2006 and the light-heavyweight division in 2005), and the most recent Asian Games Champion, Ilya Ilyin was heavily favored to take gold again in the men’s middle-heavyweight division of the 2012 Olympic weightlifting tournament. Among his strongest challengers were Aleksandr Ivanov of Russia, the 2010 World Champion, his compatriot Andrey Demanov, the 2011 European Champion, 2008 runner-up, and 2006 and 2009 bronze medalist, Anatolii Cîrîcu of Moldova, the reigning European Champion and runner-up in 2011, and Kim Min-Jae of South Korea, twice Asian Champion (2011 and 2012) and bronze medalist at the 2009 World and 2010 Asian Championships.

The competition in the snatch portion was tight, with Ilyin, Ivanov, and Kim all lifting 185 kg. Kim fell down to seventh after failing to lift 220 kg, and then 221 kg, before Ilyin even made a first attempt. Ilyin came in at 224 kg and lifted it with ease, breaking his own Olympic record for total points with a score of 409. Though six tried, only half were able to match this, starting with Ivanov who lifted the same weight and thus tied Ilyin in points and, having the lower body weight, put himself in the gold medal position. Demanov then managed 225 kg in two attempts, lining himself up for bronze, but he was quickly displaced by Cîrîcu, who lifted 226 kg to tie the score and, as the lighter competitor, knock Demanov off the podium. For his second attempt, Ilyin lifted 228 kg, again breaking his own Olympic record (this time in the clean and jerk) and setting a world record for total points with 413. Neither Cîrîcu nor Ivanov could respond and thus, assured of gold, Ilyin went for a world record clean and jerk lift, succeeding in his attempt and setting the new bar at 233 kg.

That was how the event and the results seemed to have ended. In 2015, however, the IOC began re-testing samples from the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Olympics, using newer, more advanced testing techniques, in an effort to find those who had used performance enhancing drugs (PEDs), but in whom it could not be detected at the time of those Olympics. This was one of the many events affected.

And in November 2016 this event’s results underwent drastic changes, as it proved to be possibly the “dirtiest” event in Olympic history, maybe rivaled only by the 2012 women’s athletics 1,500 metres. Between 21 November 2016 and 12 January 2017 seven of the top 11 finishers in this event were implicated in PED usage and disqualified. This included all three medalists – Ilya Ilyin, Aleksandr Ivanov, and Anatolii Cîrîcu, but also the 4th Andrey Demanov, 6th (İntiqam Zairov), 7th (Almas Uteshov), and 11th (Norayr Vardanyan) place finishers. The athlete listed 7th, as of October 2019, is Abbas Al-Qaisoum (KSA), who originally finished only 15th.

Iranian Saeid Mohammadpour was moved up to the gold medal and Korean Kim Min-Jae was awarded the silver medal. Such was the carnage in the results of this event, however, that the original ninth-place finisher, Poland’s Tomasz Zielinski, who seemed eligible for the bronze medal, was not originally advanced to a medal, likely because he had a positive pre-Games test for nandrolone just before the 2016 Rio Olympics. His brother, Adrian Zielinski, also tested positive before the 2016 Games and was sent home. Ilyin set a record of sorts, by defending his gold medal disqualification from the 2008 Olympics in the same weight class, which was also announced in November 2016. He became the first Olympian to ever “defend” a gold medal disqualification.