Some Russian athletes are likely to have tested positive for doping in the 2008 Olympic Games after their samples were re-examined, the Interfax news agency quoted the Russian sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, as saying on Friday.
Thirty one athletes from six sports could be banned from this year’s Rio Olympics after failing doping tests when 454 samples from the 2008 Beijing Games were re-examined, the International Olympic Committee said on Tuesday.
“Now they will publish [a report for] 2008. I guess that our sportspeople will be there as well. We are talking about 12 countries here,” the agency quoted Mutko as saying.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Russia’s top investigative agency said it would like to question the former head of the Russian doping lab over his allegations of state-sponsored doping at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
Investigative committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told Vesti FM radio it would need to ask Grigory Rodchenkov about his claim that he switched tainted urine samples for clean ones at the lab used for the Sochi Games. Rodchenkov told the New York Times he received help from people he believed to be officers of the Russian security services.
Russian officials have acknowledged the country has a problem with doping but denied any government involvement. Markin described Rodchenkov’s claims as part of what he called a US campaign to “discredit our country, paint it in black”.
