Ukraine’s Oleg Verniaiev, a gold and silver medallist at the Rio 2016 Olympics, will be eligible for the Paris 2024 Olympics after having a four-year doping ban reduced by half ©Getty Images

Ukrainian gymnast Oleg Verniaiev, a gold and silver medallist at the Rio 2016 Olympics, will be eligible for Paris 2024 after having a four-year doping ban reduced by half.

Verniaiev, who won parallel bars gold and all-around silver in Rio, was banned on July 12 2021, backdated to November 5 2020, after testing positive for meldonium, NBC Sports reports.

But the 29-year-old has convinced the Court of Arbitration for Sport that the source of the banned substance was contaminated food products.

Posting on social media, Verniaiev, whose ban meant he missed defending his title at the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics, said: "It was a long process, during which I proved that I had no intention to doping.

Ukraine’s Oleg Verniaiev, parallel bars gold medallist at Rio 2016, will be eligible for the Paris 2024 Olympics after having a four-year doping ban reduced by half ©Getty Images
Ukraine’s Oleg Verniaiev, parallel bars gold medallist at Rio 2016, will be eligible for the Paris 2024 Olympics after having a four-year doping ban reduced by half ©Getty Images

"The court reduced the sanction twice.

"This suggests that the court agreed with my arguments and confirmed that meldonium got into my body without my fault or negligence."

Verniaiev tested positive for meldonium on August 26 2020, and was provisionally banned on November 5.

He questioned the ban in July 2021, posting on social media: "Why was only one test positive, and not one of the nearly a dozen subsequent tests confirmed the presence of a prohibited substance?"

Verniaiev missed all-around gold in Rio by one tenth of a point from Japan’s Kohei Uchimura.

He also won the 2019 world all-around bronze medal.