Albania looks for lost honour in US

Pampered heroes during communist times, Albania's weightlifters now train in a rundown hall, hoping to improve their image at the upcoming World Championships after a doping scandal.

"Look at these sinister training conditions!" declares Mikel Lundraxhiu, who succeeded his father as coach at the hall in Peqin, the Balkan country's weightlifting stronghold, around 50 kilometres (31 miles) south of Tirana.

Albania's best weightlifter, 25-year-old Daniel Godelli, trains a few metres away.

The icy and insalubrious hangar was "the best hall of the communist era," according to the national weightlifting federation chief, Elez Gjozaj.

But today buckets collect rain seeping from the roof, the walls -- still bearing socialist propaganda -- are rotten from the damp and there is no running water or electricity.

A Tirana councillor and member of the party of President Ilir Meta, Gjozaj is not nostalgic about the totalitarian regime of Enver Hoxha, who died in 1985.

But "sport is less supported today, to our big regret," said the federation chief, himself a former weightlifter.

Athletes no longer enjoy freely upgraded housing, reduced working hours, medical benefits, better food rations and the enviable social status they once had.

- Propaganda tool -

Weightlifting was a successful propaganda tool of a regime that hermetically sealed its country to any outside influence.

At the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Ymer Pampuri gave Albanian sport what still remains the only world title in its history.

Albanian weightlifters won "more than 200 medals at international competitions," said Gjozaj.

At the time there were 500 weightlifters compared with only little over 200 today.

"After the fall of communism, there was a haemorrhage of athletes from the country, particularly to Greece," he said.

"In Albania, weightlifting is an elite sport but the attention given to it by authorities is nil."

The federation operates on 60,000 euros ($71,000) a year, according to its chief.

It was therefore necessary to call business contacts to the rescue when his organisation was fined 200,000 euros after some of its best athletes tested positive for doping at the 2014 World Championships in Kazakhstan.

Four Albanian weightlifters failed the tests, including Godelli, who lost his world title for taking stanozolol, the same steroid for which Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of his 100m gold medal at the 1988 Olympics.

All claimed to have been doped without their knowledge, pointing to a training camp of their Greek rivals.

"I do not know what happened, maybe it was the food given to us or something intentional from people who wanted to harm us," Godelli suggested.

- No doctor -

While defending the good faith of his athletes, Gjozaj admits that the scandal was a "blow".

"The doping was a plague for the federation," he says. "But it's over."

"They had suspended athletes in the past because of doping, but as far as I know, they don't have those issues at the moment," said Attila Adamfi, head of the International Weightlifting Federation.

Albania does not have an anti-doping laboratory.

"In international competitions, the other teams have a doctor, a nurse, a psychologist, therapists, masseurs," said Erkand Qerimaj, 29, who tested positive for doping in 2012.

Albania has always been "missing a doctor who would assume real responsibilities," he added.

From November 28 to December 5, in Anaheim in California, he will be among five Albanians hoping to draw a line under this period, encouraged by their performance at the European Championships in April in Split, Croatia.

There they won three medals, including a gold.

But Godelli will not be in the United States after the authorities refused him a visa, fearing that he would stay in the country illegally.

He will have to wait until the European Championships next April, at home in Albania.