Obituary

Olympic champion Macha passes away

By United World Wrestling Press

CORSIER-SUR-VEVEY, Switzerland (May 31) -- Olympic champion and United World Wrestling Hall of Fame member Vitezslav MACHA (CZE) passed away on May 29 aged 75.

Macha, born in 1948, was the only Olympic champion from the country as he won the gold medal in Greco-Roman 74kg weight class at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. He had defeated Petros GALAKTOPOULOS (GRE) in the final bout. At the next Olympics in 1976, Macha won a silver medal at the Montreal Games to become a two-time Olympic medalist.

In World Championships, Macha stood on the top of the podium twice -- 1974 in Poland and 1977 in Sweden. His European Championships record includes a gold medal at the 1977 edition and four other medals -- two silver and two bronze.

Macha last competed at the 1980 Olympic Games, finishing sixth, before moving into coaching and even holding the post of President of the Czech Wrestling Federation.

UWW expresses its deepest condolences to the Macha family.

CAS imposes four-year ban on Gadisov

By United World Wrestling Press

CORSIER-SUR-VEVEY, Switzerland (September 27) -- The Court of Arbitration for Sport has imposed a four-year suspension on former world champion Abdusalam GADISOV for a sample collected on August 6, 2015.

Gadisov, who won the gold medal at the 2014 World Championship, was subjected to an out-of-competition test. The sample was initially reported negative by the Moscow lab but it was kept for long-term storage.

On a re-analysis by the Lausanne lab in April 2020, it returned with an adverse analytical finding for dehydrochloromethyltestosterone, an anabolic-androgenic steroid prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

The RUSADA ‘Disciplinary Anti-Doping Committee’ declared a decision on May 27, 2021 that the wrestler had not committed a doping violation. WADA and RUSADA appealed this decision to CAS.

The CAS heard the matter and decided that the wrestler had committed a doping violation and all the results of Gadisov from August 6, 2015 till August 5, 2019 must be disqualified including the silver medal he won at the 2015 World Championships in Las Vegas.

Abdusalam Gadisov has appealed against CAS’s decision to the Swiss Federal Tribunal.