Russia was ordered to return gold medals from a 2008 Beijing Olympics women's relay race after one of the runners tested positive for a banned substance in a reanalysis of her sample.
The decision is another black eye for Russia, whose track and field team was banned altogether from the 2016 Rio Olympics over allegations of state-sponsored doping.
The International Olympic Committee on August 16 disqualified sprinter Yulia Chermoshanskaya for testing positive for steroid use. The committee said Chermoshanskaya claimed she had been injured ahead of the Beijing Games and had been receiving injections on medical advice. But it said she should have declared those medications at the time.
Her relay teammates in that 4x100-meter race were Aleksandra Fedoriva, Yulia Gushchina, and Yevgenia Polyakova.
Belgium was second in the race, and is expected to be upgraded to gold. Nigeria won bronze, and will move up to silver, with fourth-place Brazil now getting the bronze.
The Olympic committee stores samples for a decade to test with newer methods and it conducted targeted retests ahead of the Rio Olympics.
