Russian weightlifters given four-year doping bans

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russians Ilya Atnabaev and Denis Kekhter have been given four-year doping bans, the International Weightlifting Federation said on its website www.iwf.net on Thursday. A blood sample taken from Atnabaev, victorious in the 85kg category at the 2014 European Junior Championships, found traces of the banned substance Stanozolol. Kekhter, who won the 94kg class at the same junior event, was banned for missing doping tests. The two 18-year-olds are suspended from competition until 2019. Russia was suspended from world athletics in November following allegations of widespread and state-sponsored doping in a World Anti-Doping Agency report. On Dec. 24, world champion weightlifter Alexei Lovchev was provisionally suspended for failing a doping test. The 26-year-old Russian, the 105kg world record holder, was found in a sample to have traces of the banned substance Ipamorelin. (Reporting by Dmitriy Rogovitskiy; Editing by Tony Jimenez)