Olympic champion Gymnast Verniaiev out of Tokyo Games after doping ban

Olympic champion gymnast Oleg Verniaiev is set to miss the Tokyo Games because he has been banned following a failed drug test.

The Ukrainian gymnast said in an Instagram post on Tuesday (13th July) that he tested positive for the banned substance meldonium and was banned after a ruling by the Gymnastics Ethics Foundation, which hears disciplinary cases in the sport.

Verniaiev said the GEF "decided that the concentration of meldonium found in my body is sufficient to ban me for four years" and that the ban is backdated to run from November 2020. That could also rule him out of the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

Verniaiev denies wrongdoing and said he will appeal the ruling to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Verniaiev won gold on the parallel bars at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016 and was the silver medalist in the all-around, in a dramatic, close loss to Japan's Kohei Uchimura.