The Russian super-heavyweight, the world’s strongest ever female weightlifter until four years of results were scrubbed in a court ruling, first tested positive in 2006. She was 15 years old at the time.

Teenage girls of similar age and even younger have been caught up in doping scandals in Egypt and Thailand in the past, and two of those provisionally suspended in Turkmenistan in recent months are teenage daughters of the national youth coach.

What would be regarded as child abuse, a criminal offence, in some parts of the world is or has been part of the weightlifting culture in others.

"We must be more scientific, we must change the culture of some coaches who believe only in doping," the International Weightlifting Federation’s (IWF) President Mohammed Jalood said.

"Athletes do not decide to dope on their own, they do it because their coach tells them to."

A significant first step towards bringing coaches under tighter scrutiny was taken in Sweden in March, when an IWF coaching licence project was launched on a pilot basis by the European Weightlifting Federation.

Certification of coaches will be a global policy from next year, and those who are caught up in doping will face the prospect of losing their licence, their livelihood and their reputation.

To gain a licence, coaches will be educated via one of the IWF’s new academies which are being set up in Cuba, China and Bulgaria, perhaps with more to come.

“If a coach doesn’t understand what a lifter is taking, it is better that they are not a coach," Jalood said on Thursday (September 7), two days before dozens of coaches at an International Testing Agency seminar were told to avoid all supplements as well as risky medicines and banned substances.

“It’s not worth the risk, good food is enough, and you don’t need any supplements at all,” was the message at the seminar, held at the IWF World Championships venue here in Saudi Arabia’s capital.

In a room in the VIP area of the venue on Thursday Jalood spoke again about a future where coaches use “science, not doping” before the signing of a partnership with the Cuban university that will host one of the IWF academies, the Manuel Fajardo University of Physical Culture and Sports Sciences.

The agreement was between the Pan American Weightlifting Federation (FPLP) and the sport-specialist university and will be a key part of the IWF’s future efforts to educate coaches and administrators.

Effectively, it is for the creation of a “degree in weightlifting” course in Havana, for which enrolment will open after the end of the IWF’s busy qualifying period for Paris 2024 in April.

It will be taught online and in person in three languages, Spanish, Portuguese and English, which will make it attractive to African students, as well as Latin Americans, said FPLP President José Quinones.

Coaching education, or lack of it, is a huge barrier to development of weightlifting in Africa, according to the Kenyan John Ogolla, secretary general of the volunteer-run Kenyan Federation and a member of his National Olympic Committee.

At the African Championships in Tunis in May, Ogolla said, “My vision is that one day in Africa we will have a formal education system for coaches.

“No coaching structure is in place in Kenya or anywhere else in sub-Saharan Africa… there is no structure for coaches to benefit from a coaching qualification.

A partnership with a university, and a formalised coaching set-up would enable qualified coaches to make a living “not just in Kenya but anywhere in the world”.

The Cuban degree course is not in Africa, which is where Ogolla would like it to be, but it could help - especially if development money goes towards helping prospective graduates to enrol and study.

Coaching will be at the heart of the “weightlifting degree” course, which will teach students in theory and practice. Preparing for competition, injuries and injury prevention, nutrition, and wider subjects such as organising and running competitions will be on the curriculum, full details of which are yet to be finalised.

There will also be collaboration with the Bulgaria and China academies to align what is being taught around the world.

"Cuba is well known for its scientific approach in sport," said Jalood. "This course helps us to clean weightlifting, to go for science not doping."

The agreement lasts for five years. According to the signed document, "Its renewal will depend, to a large extent, on the level of activity achieved."

It will be very good news for weightlifting if this project continues for far more than five years.