MOSCOW, September 23. /TASS/. Russia’s 2012 Olympics freestyle wrestling champion Bilyal Makhov has been suspended for the period of four years for violating anti-doping regulations, the press service of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) announced in a statement on Thursday.

The term of the suspension of the 34-year-old Russian athlete came into force as of January 27, 2020, according to the statement. The wrestler has been disqualified after his doping sample tested positive for a banned substance.

Reached by a TASS correspondent asking to comment on the situation, RUSADA’s spokesperson said Makhov had failed to provide documented explanations about how a banned substance entered his body.

"The athlete stated initially that the banned substance entered his body after taking medical preparations, which were prescribed by his doctor during his medical treatment abroad," the spokesperson said. "However, the athlete failed to provide medical documentation confirming such prescriptions and did not give the names of the medications at the issue."

"This is why the Disciplinary Anti-Doping Commission concluded that the athlete had failed to provide explanations on how the banned substance ended up in his body," RUSADA’s spokesperson added.

Makhov’s representative Tigran Avanyan told TASS that the wrestler had been disqualified because he did not use his right for the Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) permit.

"You all well know what Bilyal Makhov had to go through during his sports career, particularly the horrible incident in 2008, when he suffered a case of hydrargyrism [poisoning by mercury]," Avanyan said in an interview with TASS. "It was the time when not only his sports career, but his life was in danger."

"It turned out that on January 13, 2020, his out-of-competition doping sample was collected and it tested positive for a banned substance," he continued. "Bilyal was tested thousands of times for doping throughout his career and there was never even a hint on a possible doping abuse, but it turned out this time that he was careless and failed to report a medical preparation in his TUE list."

Avanyan also said that Makhov was unlikely to appeal his four-year disqualification as he realized his mistake of failing to report a medical preparation for the TUE list upon his return from Germany, where he underwent a spinal surgery.

"It is more likely that he will be not appealing this decision," the spokesman stated. "He understands that he made a mistake after failing to report a medical preparation for the TUE permission list upon his return from Germany."

Avanyan also said that Makhov was not thinking at the moment about wrapping up his sports career and may try to qualify for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris, after his suspension term expired.

2012 Summer Olympic Games in London

Russia’s Makhov and Iranian wrestler Komeil Ghasemi won the bronze medals at the 2012 Olympics in the men’s freestyle wrestling in the under-120 kg category. The gold and silver medals at that time went to Uzbekistan’s Artur Taimazov and Georgia’s Davit Modzmanashvili respectively.

However, Taimazov and Modzmanashvili were stripped of their Olympic medals in 2019 after the reanalysis of their doping samples, which tested positive for banned performance enhancing drugs. This unprecedented event shook up the wrestling world, sparking a major change.

For the first time in the Olympic wrestling history, two gold medals were awarded in one category, namely to Russia’s Makhov and Iran’s Ghasemi.

For the wrestling world it was an unparalleled event, where the gold and silver medals' winners in the same weight category were stripped of their titles and the two golds were later awarded to third-place winners.

The 34-year-old Russian heavyweight wrestler is a three-time World Champion in freestyle wrestling (2007, 2009, and 2010) on top of his silver and bronze medals from the World Championships in 2011 and 2015 respectively.