He is the second leading lifter from Kazakhstan to have committed suicide in less than two years.

The multiple Asian champion Albert Linder took his own life at the age of 25 in September 2021.

Sedov had apparently "disappeared" recently, according to an in-depth report in Sport-express that said he had not contacted friends or relatives for a while and had been suffering mental health problems for about six months.

His body was found in his home village in the Karatal district.

"According to the testimony of his relatives, he committed suicide," the local law enforcement agency said in a statement.

Sedov finished fourth at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing at the age of 20 and won the World Championships title in 2009 at Goyang in South Korea in the old 85 kilograms weight category.

But he lost his gold medal when he was disqualified from all results between 2008 and 2016 after a reanalysis of his stored sample from Beijing came up positive for the banned steroid stanozolol.

That was a second doping violation for Sedov, who had served a two-year suspension as a teenager from 2006 until 2008.

In 2016 Sedov had said in an interview, "For all these doping scandals, the head coach of the Kazakh national team Alexei Ni should be held accountable.

"It’s his job."

Sedov claimed that other national team members lived in fear of Ni.

A dispute with the coach had caused Sedov to have a nervous breakdown at the National Championships in 2016, he said.

His last competition was the Asian Championships in April 2016, a few weeks before news of his reanalysis positive was announced, along with an eight-year ban that was still running when he died.

A long but fruitless process of appeals ended in 2019, when the disqualifications were imposed.

Sedov had apparently been hoping to move into coaching but was unable to do so while suspended.

He had sometimes criticised Ilya Ilyin, the double Olympic champion from Kazakhstan who forfeited both gold medals because of doping.

Ilyin was quoted by Sport-express today saying, "It is very painful to watch when at first a person is a star for society, he is elevated.

"And then at one moment he becomes a nobody, and also becomes guilty of the whole situation in which he was just a part of the system, where he was just doing his job.

"It hurts a lot."

Ilyin said the Kazakhstan Weightlifting Federation should no longer chase medals at any cost and should provide more support for athletes caught doping.

"These are also our people; we should not forget about them," he said.

Linder was apparently also a victim of poor treatment and skulduggery within the national team, according to his brother Semyon who has been very critical of the coaches.

Sedov’s elder brother, Sergey, was part of Kazakhstan’s national coaching team during the time when Linder suffered depression.

The Kazakhstan Weightlifting Federation said in a statement that Sedov had "dedicated his life to sport" and offered its condolences to his family.

Last month the former youth world champion Artyom Antropov was provisionally suspended for a doping violation at the Asian Championships, the latest in a long line of Kazakhstan weightlifters who have tested positive.

At the delayed 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Kazakhstan was restricted two only one male and one female in weightlifting because of its poor doping record.