MOSCOW -- Russian athletes Tatyana Lebedeva and Maria Abakumova have been stripped of three world track championship medals because of doping.
The Athletics Integrity Unit, which handles doping cases in track and field, says Abakumova has had her javelin results from August 2008 to August 2012 erased, stripping her of her world championship bronze from 2009 and gold from 2011.
Czech thrower Barbora Spotakova is in line to inherit the 2011 world title.
Lebedeva, now a senator in Russia, had her results from August 2008 to August 2010 erased, including a silver medal from the 2009 worlds.
Abakumova and Lebedeva had already been disqualified from the 2008 Olympics after a 2016 retest of their samples came back positive. The process was delayed because they made an unsuccessful legal challenge.