Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko has remarked accusations that four gold medal winners from Russia at the Sochi Olympics made use of performance enhancing drugs are just "speculation."
2. Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko has remarked accusations
that four gold medal winners from Russia at the Sochi Olympics
made use of performance enhancing drugs are just
"speculation."
The allegations were made by former Russian anti-doping
officer Vitaly Stepanov in an interview with "60 Minutes" due to
air this Sunday. An excerpt was shown on Friday by "CBS
Evening News."
Stepanov said former head of the Moscow anti-doping
laboratory Grigory Rodchenkov told him intelligence officers of
Russia assisted athletes of the country in covering up use of
performance enhancing drugs. Stepanov also said Rodchenkov
has a "Sochi list" of Russians who competed in the 2014 Winter
Olympics on anabolic androgenic steroids, including at least
four gold medal winners. Hosts Russia won 13 gold medals at
3. In November, the International Association of Athletics
Federations suspended Russia. An IAAF council meeting
in June will decide if the track and field team of Russia can
compete in the Rio Olympics in August. Russia now has to
convince the IAAF, the world governing body of athletics,
that it has put measures in place to show anti-doping
operation improvement and a "change of culture."
The Rio athletics program starts on August 12 but
registration are required to be completed about a month
before. This would leave little time for the vast majority of
Russian athletes who would still need to record Olympic-
standard qualifying times.
