Three Chinese women weightlifters have been stripped of Olympic titles for doping at the Beijing 2008 Games.
China faces a one-year ban from international weightlifting which should be triggered for having three Olympic doping disqualifications in a re-testing program by the IOC, which announced the verdicts on Thursday (Friday AEDT).
The IOC also took a Beijing bronze medal in women's shot put from Nadzeya Ostapchuk of Belarus on Thursday. Ostapchuk previously lost her gold medal and Olympic title from the 2012 London Games in a separate doping case.
The four medallists were among eight new disqualifications announced in the latest round of an extensive program to re-analyse samples stored since the Beijing and London Olympics.
The IOC said all three Chinese weightlifters tested positive for GHRP-2, which stimulates production of growth hormone.
They were: Cao Lei in the 75-kilogram class; Chen Xiexia at 48kg; and Liu Chunhonog at 69kg. Liu also tested positive for sibutramine, a banned stimulant.
The one-year expulsion for China should be imposed by the International Weightlifting Federation. The governing body based in Budapest, Hungary, promised automatic bans if a nation had three athletes test positive in the IOC's Beijing and London re-tests.
The IWF previously announced the Chinese cases in August.
Doping cases are re-writing the original results from weightlifting in Beijing. Medallists in each of the three women's weight classes won by the Chinese have already been disqualified and stripped of their results by the IOC in recent weeks.
Currently, lifters from Taiwan, Russia and Kazakhstan could be upgraded to the gold medal, though it is unclear if they also tested positive for doping in the re-analysis.
The IOC recorded more than 100 positive tests across numerous sports from the Beijing and London retesting program, and more cases are expected.
