China faces a one-year ban from international weightlifting competitions after three of its athletes were stripped of their 2008 Olympic gold medals on Thursday following re-tests of samples from the Beijing Games. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it had disqualified weightlifting gold medallists Cao Lei (75kg), Chen Xiexia (48 kg) and Liu Chunhong (69kg) from the Beijing Games after they tested positive for prohibited substances. The IOC also disqualified five more athletes from both the Beijing and London 2012 Olympics, including Nadzeya Ostapchuk, of Belarus, third in the women’s shot put competition in Beijing, whose sample was positive for anabolic steroids. More...