Giuseppe Aschettino, whose best effort is more than 100 kilograms below the world’s elite, has never been remotely close to representing Britain.

But he tested positive for ligandrol (SARMS LGD-4033) at last year’s British Championships in Derby, where he bombed out in the 96kg category, and his name appears on the International Testing Agency’s (ITA) list of athletes suspended for taking a banned substance.

Aschettino was suspended for three years after an "agreement on consequences" with the ITA.

The ITA list also features a non-international Scottish athlete, Nikki Hamilton, who tested positive for cocaine at the British Championships, where like Aschettino she failed to make a total. Hamilton’s case is ongoing.

Nobody at British Weight Lifting (BWL) can remember the last international doping violation by one of its lifters, only that it was decades ago.

The nation’s last high-profile doping violation was by Sonny Webster, an Olympian whose positive for ostarine in 2017 was a national case involving UK Anti-Doping rather than the International Weightlifting Federation or ITA.

While national doping violations are serious matters, they do not have the same potential to cause problems for member federations as international offences, which can lead to further sanctions if there are three or more in a given period.

Disruption to the weightlifting calendar caused by COVID, the presence of lifters from Malta at the British Championships, and the random selection of Aschettino and Hamilton, a 64kg lifter, all contributed to the worst news in years for BWL.

When competitions were cancelled during the pandemic, the Commonwealth Weightlifting Federation (CWF) gave athletes a last chance to qualify for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.

It added extra international qualifying contests to the calendar early last year in New Zealand, Canada, Mauritius, Singapore and England.

Britain’s National Championships in Derby was one of the five and thereby changed from being a national competition to an international one.

In the event only Malta sent athletes, as those representing Ghana and Jamaica were dual nationals who lived in Britain.

The testing authority changed from UK Anti-Doping to the ITA, which appears to have selected random athletes for testing due to a lack of intelligence on who it should target.

Why Aschettino was asked to provide a sample is a mystery: in the 2021 British Open his 96kg total was lower than the 73kg winner Jack Oliver. In Derby he snatched 127kg and failed with three clean and jerk attempts at 150kg.

According to information on the British Government’s companies register, Aschettino is a civil servant who resigned as a director of the Go Lift club, based in Newtownabbey, Belfast last August.

There was no response when insidethegames attempted to contact the club to ask whether Aschettino had resigned as a consequence of his positive test.

The British Championships took place during the period in which any doping violations count towards cumulative totals that can lead to loss of Olympic quota places for National Federations.

But because Aschettino's suspension was less than four years, as Hamilton's should be if the offence is proven, the situation is not as bad as it might be and there will not be a problem if there are no further British positives before the summer of 2024.

The ITA took over anti-doping procedures for the IWF in 2019 and signed a long-term agreement in 2020, since when it has compiled the list of sanctioned athletes.

The list came into the public domain last week when the ITA confirmed that Anton Pliesnoi, from Georgia, had been provisionally suspended - the third weightlifter from the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games to test positive after winning a medal.

A statement by BWL said it "acknowledges the British anti-doping rule violations as published by the ITA."

Matthew Curtain, BWL’s chief executive said: "This serves as a clear warning to all athletes, both funded and non-funded, of the importance of adhering to all anti-doping rules to ensure complete compliance.

"British Weight Lifting will continue to work closely with UKAD and the IWF in the fight against doping and to promote and provide a clean sport for all."