Middleweight (≤63 kilograms), Women

The favorite would have been China’s Liu Haixia, world record holder and reigning World Champion, but Olympic weightlifting rules limit nations to a maximum of four female lifters, so she was not included on the squad for Beijing. Russia’s Svetlana Tsarukayeva became the favorite by default, as the silver medalist at the 2007 Worlds, but she missed all three of her snatch attempts and was eliminated. So going down the list of medalists from 2007, that left the bronze medalist, North Korean Pak Hyon-Suk, who did come through for the gold medal, edging Kazakh Irina Nekrasova. Tsarukayeva would win the silver medal in this class at the 2012 Olympics. Pak’s gold medal was the first for North Korea in Beijing, and one of only two they won in 2008, and the first gold medal ever won in weightlifting for DPR Korea. Pak had finished sixth as a lightweight at the 2004 Olympics when she was only 16-years-old.

That was how the event and the results seemed to have ended. In 2015, however, the IOC began re-testing samples from the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Olympics, using newer, more advanced testing techniques, in an effort to find those who had used performance enhancing drugs (PEDs), but in whom it could not be detected at the time of those Olympics. This was one of the many events affected. Of note, every women’s weightlifting event from the 2008 Beijing Olympics was affected by positive re-tests for PEDs.

In November 2016 Kazakh lifter Irina Nekrasova tested positive for stanozolol, was disqualified, and lost her silver medal. Chinese Taipei lifter Lu Ying-Chi was moved up to the silver medal, while the bronze medal was re-assigned to Canadian Christine Girard.