Soviet Hockey Star Says Teammates Conspired to Cheat on Drug Testing

HELSINKI, Finland —  Soviet hockey players and laboratory workers conspired to deceive drug testers at the 1986 World Championships in Moscow by switching urine specimens in the toilets, former Soviet star Igor Larionov claims in a new book.

Larionov, who now plays for the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks, also charges that Soviet national team Coach Viktor Tikhonov ordered some players to receive injections even though they did not know the contents of the shots.

Larionov, a long-time critic of Tikhonov and the way Soviet hockey is run, makes his claims in a book, “The Front Line Rebels,” which has been published in Finnish.

Excerpts of the book were printed this week in the Helsinki newspaper, Uusi Suomi, a respected daily that is the second-largest in Finland.

“When Soviet players went to the doping control points they used to take a container of prepared urine from behind the toilet bowl, which had been placed there,” Larionov said in the book.

Soviet laboratory personnel were involved in the scheme and would follow players into the toilets, the book says.

The Soviets, who have dominated world hockey for the past three decades, have been accused in the past of drug use. But no proof of doping has been found.