After the recent news that Ilya Ilyin's samples from 2012 and 2008 both tested positive, Ilyin invited media to his training to hold a press conference to address the news of his positive tests and the provisional suspensions.



Here's a rough translation, thanks to Nikita Durnev of Durnev Weightlifting:

"It was a punch below the belt, I wasn't expecting that. They want to take my medals and I will obviously go against it, because I was honest and won them after passing three drug tests. They test me before Beijing 2008 then in the morning (7am) and then after meet. When they were putting the medal over my head they liked everything and no one was questioning me.

There are a lot of question towards IWF. One of them is why they targeted several people but not all? I don't want to point fingers at anyone, but it seems like somebody proved B was positive because they needed to be positive, and somebody's returned negative. Our sport is growing and we obviously need to involve world level lawyers, because we need to be prepared and we need to push not only training process further, but also the protection of our athletes needs to be on the world level, because on that level big political parties involved as well.

I really appreciate the support of all the people and especially the Kazakh people who have been supporting me throughout entire time, cheering me on the streets etc."

According to Durnev, Ilyin also said "anything could happen with those samples (urine/blood) in 8 years, and no one knows where they were stored for entire time."