The Indian Wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt will now have a reason to be happy about. This Bronze medal winner of London Olympics 2012 was having a hard time after a disappointing performance at the Rio Olympics Qualification Round. But this sudden pleasant surprise news from London Olympics gave him a reason to celebrate. The Bronze medal that he won in London Olympics in wrestling in 2012 is decided to be upgraded to Silver by the Authorities.
This unexpected upgrade was triggered because of a positive dope test of the Silver medal winner from Russia, Besik Kudukhov, in the 60-kg freestyle event in London.
It is to be noted that Kudukhov has died 3 years ago in a car accident in Russia in 2013. He was only 27 years old when he died. Meanwhile, ahead of the Rio Olympics this month, the committee engaged in organizing Olympics, the International Olympics Committee (IOC) is a procedural way, had re-tested the samples of four-time world champion, Kudukhov’s samples. They were collected during the London games. It is a standard practice of Olympics association to store the samples of the participants for up to 10 years to allow the use of advanced methods for testing the weed out dope cheats.
The sources in United World Wrestling (UWW), the governing body of wrestling in the world said, “The samples of five wrestlers, including Russia’s Besik Kudukhov (60 kg) and Uzbekistan’s Artur Taymazov’s (120 kg), have tested positive for banned substances. Kudukhov failed a dope test in re-tests of samples collected during the London Games. In Taymazov’s case, the re-tests date back to samples collected from the Beijing Games (2008). Kudukhov is a silver medallist and Taymazon is a gold-medal winner. They will now lose their medals. With Kudukhov testing positive, Yogeshwar Dutt of India will get receive silver.”
Once the upgrade is officially announced, Yogeshwar will join the league of wrestler Sushil Kumar and shooter Vijay Kumar as silver medalists for India from the London Olympic Games.
In London Olympics 2012, Yogeshwar lost to Kudukhov in the quarterfinals and thus, Kudukhov entered finals. But Yogeshwar got a chance in the repechage round and defeated Franklin Gomez of Puerto Rico, Masoud Esmaeilpour of Iran and Ri Jong-Myong of North Korea to claim a bronze medal.
As per the sources from UWW, there are only five wrestlers who have failed re-tests. The deadline for re-tests was eight years from the collection of samples previously IOC extended it by two years in 2015.
