Russian Positive Doping Tests Rise at ‘Alarming’ Rate in 2018

The doping issue with Russian athletes continues to grow.

Russian doping cases have nearly doubled in the past year, according to the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA).

Yuri Ganus, the director of RUSADA, said the group detected 113 potential breaches of doping rules since January, The Associated Press reported. That number is nearly double the 59 cases found in 2017.

WADA’s executive committee has a scheduled vote Sept. 20 on whether to lift RUSADA’s suspension.

“The number of breaches is alarming,” Ganus told news outlets. “I don’t have any optimism (that the suspension will be lifted).”

He said that his organization is committed to the highest standards of work and that the number of positive tests could partially be because of more testing. RUSADA collected 7,013 samples, according to the AP — 800 more than last year.

He also described the completion of two of the four internal investigations.

“Getting WADA compliance is one of the main tasks,” Ganus told news outlets. “We are striving for the highest standards of work. Recently, we conducted four internal investigations. Two of them have already been completed. According to one of them, the materials were transferred to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and to the Prosecutor’s Office. As a result of the second of them, it became clear that for the entire period of RUSADA’s work from 2008 to 2015, about 100,000 protocols on the surrender of doping tests were not introduced into the ADAMS system. It frankly frightened us. Now we in working mode enter these protocols into the system, and also give answers to all interested parties, including federations.”

WADA ruled that RUSADA routinely covered up positive samples from leading athletes. RUSADA has since had an overhaul in staff.

Ganus told news outlets Russia’s testing was now much more reliable, in part because of a greater focus on using intelligence to target specific athletes for testing.

Read the full AP story here.

Name*

Email*

Welcome to our community. We invite you to join our discussion. Our community guidelines are simple: be respectful and constructive, keep on topic, and support your fellow commenters. Commenting signifies that you agree to our Terms of Use

Name*

Email*

1 Comment

Oldest

Newest Most Voted

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments

Alessandro Proietti

5 years ago

Na’ novità!