"The situation is very critical, but there is something wrong, because the [athletes] departed all clean. They were tested and everything was fine," David Rigert said in a phone interview with R-Sport. "They will press and bite as hard as possible, including up to full disqualification."
The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) provisionally suspended world clean and jerk record holder Aleksei Lovchev on Thursday for allegedly testing positive to the use of a peptide that increases growth hormone levels called ipamorelin.
Rigert, who was the head coach of the Soviet national weightlifting team in 1985-1987 and the Russian team in 2004-2012, said he would not be surprised if the team was disqualified from the Rio Olympics altogether.
"Every year there were showdowns in my tenure. There are special rules if a certain number of athletes are caught. It is possible that either the entire team may be disqualified, or the number of qualified quota places may be reduced," he explained.
Russia has secured the maximum number of six male and four female weightlifters for the 2016 Summer Olympics at the November IWF World Championships in the United States.
