DOPING: IOC BANS 11 RUSSIAN ATHLETES FROM OLYMPIC GAMES

LAUSANNE, Switzerland – The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has imposed sanctions on 11 Russian athletes for ingesting performance enhancing drugs Sochi 2014 Olympic games.

The affected athletes are Speed skaters Ivan SKOBREV, Artem KUZNE, Lugers Tatyana IVANOVA and Albert DEMCHENKO, silver medallists in Sochi 2014. Others are Cross-country skiers Nikita KRYUKOV, Alexander BESSMERTNYKH, Natalia MATVEEVA, Bobsledders Liudmila UDOBKINA and Maxim BELUGIN. The rest are Ice hockey players Tatiana BURINA and Anna SHCHUKINA

To date, the number of cases opened by the Disciplinary Commission has reached 46 after additional findings from the re-analyses.

“All 46 of them have been handled, of which three have been filed. As some investigations are still ongoing (notably the forensic analysis of the bottles), it cannot be excluded that there might be new elements that would justify opening further new cases and holding more hearings”, the IOC said.

The IOC Disciplinary Commission, composed for 11 cases of Mr Denis Oswald (Chairman), Mrs Gunilla Lindberg and Mr Patrick Baumann, decided that Maxim BELUGIN, Alexander BESSMERTNYKH, Tatiana BURINA, Albert DEMCHENKO, Tatyana IVANOVA, Nikita KRYUKOV, Artem KUZNETCOV, Natalia MATVEEVA, Anna SHCHUKINA, Ivan SKOBREV, and Liudmila UDOBKINA are found to have committed anti-doping rule violations pursuant to Article 2 of The International Olympic Committee Anti-Doping Rules applicable to the XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, in 2014, and are disqualified from the events in which they participated.

“In addition, the 11 athletes are declared ineligible to be accredited in any capacity for all editions of the Games of the Olympiad and the Olympic Winter Games subsequent to the Olympic Winter Games Sochi 2014”, the IOC said.

The Disciplinary Commission, chaired by IOC Member Denis Oswald, is responsible for investigating the alleged doping violations by individual Russian athletes.

“Therefore, all the samples collected from Russian athletes at the Olympic Winter Games Sochi 2014 that were available to the IOC were re-analysed. This had two goals: to further review the samples for evidence of doping, and separately to determine if the samples themselves or the bottles were manipulated or tampered with’, the IOC said.