Low weight shows cheats losing: Steiner

By Crispian Balmer

BEIJING (Reuters) - The relatively modest score needed to clinch the men's super-heavyweight weightlifting title shows that anti-doping tests are working, German gold medalist Matthias Steiner said on Tuesday.

Steiner won the competition with a combined lift of 461kg, the lowest weight since the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

"I knew it would never be so easy. There have been times when 470 kg would be needed to win and I would not have been in a position to achieve 470kg at this stage, so this is a very positive development," Steiner told reporters.

"The fact that doping tests work is a positive thing. Between 2007 and 2008 I was tested 10 times in national and international contests. A lot of testing goes on," he added.

Dozens of weightlifters were suspended for doping this year to leave the Games without some of its strongest competitors, with all 11 members of the Bulgarian national team and 11 Greek lifters all banned for taking illegal substances in 2008.

The head of the World Anti Doping agency (WADA) was quoted as saying earlier in the Games that weightlifting should be dropped from future Olympics if it failed to crack down on the cheats.

His remarks infuriated the president of the international weightlifting federation, Tamas Ajan, who said his organization had spent more than $650,000 on doping controls in the first seven months of the year and was fighting the cheats.

"It is not the task of WADA to influence the Olympic mood, which sport is in the Olympic Games and which is out of the Games," he told reporters last week.