As the hardest hit by doping, the Kazakhstan weightlifting project is full of controversy. In October 2016, International Olympic Committee announced that three Kazakh athletes who won the weightlifting event at the 2012 London Olympics had all been cancelled and deprived of their gold medals due to unqualified doping retests. The three athletes are Maneza, Portobedova and Zulfia . When it comes to Maneza and Zulfia, perhaps their "naturalized" past is even more embarrassing.
Zulfia's story is no stranger to Chinese sports fans. Before going to Kazakhstan in 2007, her name was Zhao Changling. This Hunan girl, born in 1993, was selected to practice weightlifting at the Yongzhou sports school at the age of 9, and was transferred to Kazakhstan at the age of 14 as part of the "Talent Exchange Program" of the State Sports General Administration. The period is 5 years. In the past few years, Zhao Changling, who had not outstanding achievements in China, rose rapidly, and won the gold medal in the London Olympics with 95 kg snatch, clean and jerk 131 kg, and a total score of 226 kg. The clean and jerk broke the world record. Because Zhou Jun, a Chinese player of the same level, tried to hit the pot three times, Zulfia's victory was particularly dazzling in the eyes of the Chinese people at the time, and her past was gradually exposed by the media.
While the outside world is questioning whether China's weightlifting "wolf raising plan" is under consideration, the bridge about whether Zulfia will return to China has also been further enlarged by the media. It's just that with the incident of the ban on drugs that year, Zulfia's life was suddenly marked with a black footnote. In the field of outstanding Chinese women's sports, the young Zhao Changling was not originally optimistic. At the beginning, she had to leave China under half-order and half-negotiation. Out of consideration for changing fate, Zhao Changling hesitated from the beginning to accept it gradually, but for some reason, Zhao Changling “disguised” as a Kazakh for a long time.
A similar situation also appeared in another Liaoning Fuxin girl Yao Li. Although she has a typical Chinese face, Maya Maneza, who won the women's weightlifting 63 kg championship for Kazakhstan at the 2012 London Olympics, refused to admit that she had participated in weightlifting training in China, and even Refused to answer questions from Chinese journalists in Chinese. The official information provided by Kazakhstan also shows that the athlete who has been renamed from Yao Li Maya Maneza was born in Kyrgyzstan. Intentionally or unintentionally, when the barbell was raised and lowered again and again, the perception of the Xiang girl Zhao Changling and the Fuxin girl Yao Li about their identity attributes changed dramatically.
After many years, Yao Li has become an authentic Kazakh daughter-in-law, and Maya Maneza, who is a wife and mother, has also become the boss’s wife now. Of course, around her, China is still a lingering symbol. From lifting weights to operating beauty salons, acupuncture, cupping, and Chinese medicine consultations have all been introduced to her business today.
has accumulated more and more popularity in Kazakhstan, and still bears the title of London Olympic champion. On social media, Maneza still has tens of thousands of fans to follow. However, because of doping, Zulfia and Maneza's Olympic champion status was cancelled and their gold medals taken away. Of course, this is difficult to define as their personal behavior, because the Kazakhstan weightlifting team is the hardest hit by the doping problem. It is precisely because of this that a career that should have been recognized, but in the end because of the drug ban scandal, it was unable to draw a satisfactory end.
.
