Rio 2016: Russian weightlifting team banned from Olympics after doping scandal

Six of the eight-strong team have already served bans or been implicated in the drugs scandal

Anastasia Romanova competing in Texas in November 2015 (Reuters)

The Russian weightlifting team has been banned from competing in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics due to doping offenses.

The ban is part of a large-scale doping scandal involving Russian athletes across many sports, including the track and field team.

Two of the eight-strong weightlifting team - Tatiana Kashirina and Anastasia Romanova - had already been banned for doping violations and another four team members were named in the McLaren Report, sponsored by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which exposed state sponsored cheating.

Following seven samples that tested positive for doping across the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and in London in 2012, WADA recommended that all Russian athletes be banned from the Olympics.

However, the International Olympic Committee decided against a blanket ban. The committee instead implemented a list of requirements for "clean athletes" to comply with in order to compete.

Weightlifting and athletics are the only two sports to have excluded all Russian competitors.

“We would like to highlight the extremely shocking and disappointing statistics regarding the Russian weightlifters,” read a statement from the International Weightlifting Federation.

“The integrity of the weightlifting sport has been seriously damaged on multiple times and levels by the Russians, therefore an appropriate sanction was applied in order to preserve the status of the sport," the statement added.

The Russian sports minister said 272 of the original 387 athletes selected to compete had been cleared to go to the games, which start 5 August.

The final number of cleared athletes is to be announced on Saturday.

The federations of boxing, golf, gymnastics, handball and taekwondo still have to confirm their decisions.