A Malaysian Paralympic shot putter has been stripped of his gold medal after arriving three minutes late to the event.
Muhammad Ziyad Zolkefli, 31, won gold in the F20 class final on Tuesday, August 31, and simultaneously set a new world record.
But his worst fear confirmed when he was later stripped of his medal after the silver and bronze winners complained that he had arrived too late to compete, per Daily Mail.
Zolkefli beat his own record when he was allowed to compete alongside two other latecomers under protest, and he broke his own Paralympic world record with a 17.93m throw.
Daily Mail reports that the athlete was three minutes late to the event because he did not hear the announcement that it was time.
International Paralympic Committee spokesman Craig Spence said that when Zlkefli and two other late athletes, Ecuador's Jordi Patricio Congo Villalba and Australia's Todd Hodgetts, failed t0 turn up on time, they were allowed to compete under protest pending an official investigation, The Guardian reports.
"They were late, they may have had a logical reason for being late, and therefore we allowed them to compete and look at the facts of the matter afterward," Spence said.
The World Para Athletics, however, ultimately determined that "there was no justifiable reason for the athlete's failure to report" on time.
Maksym Koval of Ukraine moved up to Gold, and Ukraine teammate Oleksandr Yarovyi took Silver after Zolkefli's disqualification, with Efstratios Nikolaidis of Greece taking Bronze.
The disqualification was met with fury on social media, with one Twitter user pointing out that the athlete was competing in a class where intellectual impairments make it difficult to keep to schedules.
A second added that while Zolkefli had been disqualified from the Olympic classification, his world record should still be acknowledged.
A third, meanwhile, said that Ukraine had only earned themselves a "stolen gold" as a result of the disqualification.
"We are now seeing comments on all our social media posts that have nothing to do with the men's shot put F20 event," Spence said, adding that the Ukrainian Paralympic Committee "was getting a lot of abuse from Malaysians."
Spence added: "I'm sorry. Rules are rules. The decision was taken. It wasn’t the Ukrainians’ fault that the Malaysian was late."