By Brian Oliver
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - China’s Deng Wei won the women's 63kg gold medal on her Olympic debut and broke the world record held by Taiwan's Lin Tzu-chi, who was withdrawn just hours before the event started.
The International Weighlifting Federation declined to comment on the reasons for Lin's withdrawal but a source close to the situation said the Taiwanese lifter failed a dope test.
Lin, who set the world record total of 261kg in winning the 2014 Asian title, was withdrawn by Taiwan's Olympic committee and then lost her world record when Deng Wei managed 262kg.
Lin, 28, is the third lifter to test positive in the past five days following Antonis Martasidis of Cyprus (85kg) and Tomasz Zielinski of Poland (94kg) who were sent home.
Deng Wei was the easiest winner of the week, finishing with a lift to spare. She beat her own clean & jerk world record by 1kg with 147kg on her second attempt to reach 262kg.
Deng finished 14kg clear of Choe Hyo Sim, the North Korean who has stood below her on the podium at the past two International Weightlifting Federation world championships. It was the widest winning margin of the six events to date.
The bronze was won by Karina Goricheva, 23, from Kazakhstan.
Deng, 23, who missed out on competing at the London Games in 2012, has plenty more championships ahead of her.
"My performances were good enough to be in the team at London four years ago but another team mate was chosen ahead of me," she said.
"This was my first Olympic Games but I said to my coach that I could break the world record so it was within my expectation. I will continue to work hard to win more gold medals.”
Siripuch Gulnoi, the Thai who had been expected to challenge for a medal, failed with all three clean & jerk attempts.