Olympic hammer throw champion banned for doping

Dilshod Nazarov, the Olympic hammer throw champion from Tajikistan, was provisionally banned for failing a retest of a 2011 World Championships doping sample.

Nazarov’s sample came back positive for a banned steroid. He has been provisionally suspended pending a tribunal, but so far none of his results have been announced as disqualified.

Nazarov, 37, finished 10th at the 2011 Worlds and at the 2012 Olympics before becoming a silver medalist at the 2015 Worlds and gold medalist at the Rio Games. He is Tajikistan’s only Olympic champion.

In Rio, Nazarov pulled off the upset after Poland’s Pawel Fajdek, who went into the Games with the world’s top 10 throws for the year, didn’t make it out of qualifying.

“The reaction back home is going to be hard to imagine,” Nazarov said that night, according to the IAAF. “I’ve got hundreds, maybe thousands of ‘likes’ on my Facebook account, so I think the country was behind me tonight.”

Nazarov is ranked 29th in the world this year and was entered in the world championships that start Friday.