DOPING: IOC IMPOSES LIFE BAN ON 3 MORE RUSSIAN ATHLETES

LAUSANNE, Switzerland – The International Olympic Committee(IOC) has imposed life ban on three Russian athletes for ingesting performance enhancing drugs at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games in Russia.

The athletes are Aleksandr KAS’YANOV, Aleksei PUSHKAREV and IIvir KHUZIN .

The IOC Disciplinary Commission, composed for these three cases of Mr Denis Oswald (Chairman), Mr Juan Antonio Samaranch and Mr Tony Estanguet, decided that Aleksandr KAS’YANOV, Aleksei PUSHKAREV and IIvir KHUZIN 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 four 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 Disciplinary Commission, chaired by IOC Member Denis Oswald, is responsible for investigating the alleged doping violations by individual Russian athletes.

According to the IOC 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.

“Due to the nature and complexity of the cases, this thorough, comprehensive and time-consuming process has taken several months and had to involve external forensic experts, who had to develop a legally-defendable methodology for all the cases under the jurisdiction of the Disciplinary Commission. Due process has to be followed, and re-analysis is still underway”, the IOC said.