Sabotage suspected as second Russian athlete 'tests positive for doping' at Winter Olympics

Sean Ingle
The Guardian
Fri, 23 Feb 2018 13:44 UTC

© Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters

Framed? Russian athlete Nadezhda Sergeeva in Pyeongchang.

Nadezhda Sergeeva, who finished 12th in the two-woman bobsleigh, has become the second Russian to test positive for a banned substance at the Winter Olympics. According to reports in the Russian media, the substance involved was trimetazidine, a stimulant usually used to treat patients suffering from angina.

The disclosure of another positive doping test comes 24 hours after the Russian curler Alexander Krushelnitsky was stripped of an Olympic bronze medal.

The news will heap further pressure on the International Olympic Committee, which will meet today to decide whether the Russian team will be allowed to march under their own flag at tomorrow's closing ceremony.

As things stand, the Russian Olympic Committee is banned, although 168 of the country's athletes have been competing in Pyeongchang under the Olympic Athletes from Russia banner. Alexander Zubkov, president of the Russian Bobsleigh Federation, confirmed Sergeeva's positive test to the Russian newspaper Sport Express.

Zubkov said that the 30-year-old Sergeeva, who finished second in the European Championships in Winterburg earlier this year with Nadezhda Paleeva, had tested negative in an out-of-competition test on 13 February but returned a positive test five days later.

Sergeeva was also among several Russians who tested positive for meldonium in 2016, after it was put on World Anti-Doping banned list. However she was cleared after WADA adopted an amnesty for athletes who had a low dose.

Comment: Which they had to do because meldonium was only listed 'banned' that year, and was largely only used by Russian athletes.

It is believed that Sergeeva tested positive at Pyeongchang 2018 after ingesting the banned substance in a nose spray. Trimetazidine is the same drug that China's three-time Olympic swimming champion Sun Yang tested positive for in 2014 and served a secret three-month ban.

Earlier this week, the Russian coach Sergey Belanov said he believed Krushelnitsky had been framed. "It's just stupid to use a single dose of meldonium," he said."It does not work that way, the drug needs a course to restore the heart muscle." He added:

"We live in a hotel in the Olympic Village. Every day a person of five passes through the rooms without us. There comes housekeeping, and completely different people: the grandmothers sweeping the floor, the young guys and girls in gauze dressings bring towels to change. Replace the bottle with another, with the contaminated substance - yes it is easy!"

Having called for the Russian Olympic Committee to consider isolating all its athletes in the future to stop further sabotages he drew a strange parallel with Krushelnitsky's case and chemical attacks in Syria.

"I have a complete analogy with what is happening in Syria with chemical attacks," Belanov said. "How is it organised there? The gang, covered by the US army, brings chlorine and infects territory. Then the guys in white arrive [Sott.net ed: that's a reference to White Helmets], they take off all this nonsense primitively and rudely, although it is clear that everything is sewn with white threads."

Comment: The Irish Examiner adds:

The construction of the case against Krushelnitckii seems straightforward; his routine doping sample has come back positive for the prohibited substance meldonium. It is the same substance used by Maria Sharapova and for which she was banned for 15 months.

Although Krushelnitckii left the Olympic village without comment, it seems his defence will be that a fellow competitor - disgruntled at having not been selected to go to the Olympics - spiked or sabotaged his drink with the prohibited substance.

The burden of proof with this defence will be on Krushelnitckii. The "someone spiked my drink" defence is rarely credibly argued in doping cases and even more seldom successful. [...]

All those on the OAR team would have known they would be subject to enhanced testing in the immediate weeks prior to, and during, the Olympics.

And Krushelnitckii was, it seems, independently tested at the end of January at a training camp in Japan before his departure to Pyeongchang. The results were negative.

OAR participants would also have been acutely aware that they were part of a sophisticated political choreography between Russia and the IOC, which it is claimed may even have resulted in athletes entering the closing ceremony under the Russian flag and in the national uniform. Krushelnitckii's positive test now puts pressure on the IOC not to allow this.

And the closing ceremony in Pyeongchang was an opportunity for Russia to draw a line under the past four years of doping allegations, in a year when it hosts another big sporting event - the Fifa World Cup.

Finally, on Tuesday when Krushelnitckii's B sample confirmed the positive finding, Norway, population 5.2m, sat on top of the Winter Olympics' medal table.

Indeed, if Krushelnitckii's case is proven, the bronze medal in mixed curling will go to Norway.

Norway and Russia have been at loggerheads for a while on the issue of doping. The Norwegian FA has, for example, stated that Russia should be forbidden from hosting the World Cup later this year and the Norwegian press has ridiculed the Russians for having to dope even its curlers.

Russia retaliated, highlighting that Norway's delegation brought around 6,000 doses of asthma medication to the 2018 Games - equating to 55 doses for every Norwegian athlete.

Sometimes it's hard to know who or what to believe on doping in sport or even why to bother.

Those Norwegians are probably top of the medals table because of their 'TUEs', dodgy exemptions handed out mainly to Western athletes so they can legally consume all the dope they want.