Three more Russians added to list of athletes punished for doping
The number of Russian athletes retroactively sanctioned for doping and sample tampering at the 2014 Sochi Olympics continues to grow with three more added to the list on Wednesday.
Bobsled team members Aleksandr Kas’yanov, Aleksei Pushkarev and Ilivir Khuzin — part of a fourth-place team in Sochi — were found to have violated anti-doping rules, the International Olympic Committee announced.
They are retroactively disqualified from the 2014 Olympics and banned from future Games.
The sanctions were handed down as a result of the ongoing Oswald Commission hearings, which are focused on allegations that the Russians participated in systemic cheating that included manipulating samples in an official testing lab during the Games.
Twenty-eight Russian athletes named in a previous report from the World Anti-Doping Agency have come under scrutiny. The IOC has tried to expedite cases involving athletes who could qualify for the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Members of Russia’s gold-medal bobsled team were sanctioned earlier this month. In all, the Oswald Commission has issued punishments for 22 Russian athletes so far.
Early next month, the IOC’s executive board will decide whether to ban the entire Russian team from the upcoming Games.
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