SOFIA: The Bulgarian press mourned on Saturday its weightlifters' pullout from the Beijing Olympics after what it called the grandest-ever doping scandal in the history of Bulgarian weightlifting.
All 11 athlets on the Bulgarian men and women squads tested positive for the banned anabolic steroid metandienon and the federation pulled the teams from the Games on Friday.
"Disgrace! 11 of our weightlifters caught doping," Bulgarian 7 Dni Sport titled its two full-page article on the scandal. "Bulgarian weightlifters will not compete in the Olympic Games, which is unheard of ... The history of weightlifting does not remember a bigger scandal," it added.
The small Balkan country, which according to statistics of the International Weightlifting Federation is one of the two all-time top powers in this sport beaten only by the former Soviet Union, has seen at least a couple of major doping scandals in its history.
But it has never before pulled out its teams ahead of Olympic Games.
And while the Bulgarian weightlifting federation pleaded innocent, Sega daily newspaper lashed out at it for "having finally managed to slap the most disgraceful stigma on Bulgarian sport."
"The sport in which Bulgaria had some of its biggest successes is now buried," widest-circulation Trud daily newspaper grieved.
The tests were conducted on June 8 and 9 at the weighlifting team's training ground in the southern town of Asenovgrad.
All the athletes' A-samples turned out positive, but the federation was still awaiting the results from the B-samples.
The federation said that preliminary data led them to believe the banned substance might have been intentionally put in the food or in a permitted supplement for quick recovery taken by the athletes.
Bulgaria was to choose six men and two women among the 11 to fill the country's Olympic quota of eight athletes in Beijing.
