![]() AP Photo/David J. Phillip |
The Latest on developments in Olympic doping stories. All times local:
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2 p.m.
The number of anti-doping tests conducted in Russia has dropped by nearly two-thirds since the country’s drug-fighting agency was suspended and placed under new management.
World Anti-Doping Agency officials released the figures Thursday. They said there were 2,244 tests on Russian athletes from Nov. 18 through May 5, compared to 6,890 tests during the same period the previous year.
The British anti-doping agency, with help from international advisers, is trying to rehabilitate Russia’s program but is running into obstacles everywhere.
WADA said the British agency was able to find only 10 doping-control officers to collect samples throughout the vast country. And some of those officers, when trying to enter Russia’s military bases, were turned away and threatened with having their visas revoked if they returned.
– Sports Writer Eddie Pells reporting from Montreal.
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8:20 p.m.
Russian doctors and athletes worked together to evade drug tests at the Sochi Olympics, passing containers of urine through a hole in the wall to replace tainted samples, The New York Times has reported.
Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of Russia’s national anti-doping laboratory, is quoted by the newspaper as saying that he replaced samples with clean urine at night through a hole in the wall at the laboratory in Sochi during the 2014 Winter Games.
Athletes took photographs of their drug forms so that the samples could be identified later and switched, according to the story posted Thursday.
Three gold medalists were listed on a spreadsheet of athletes provided by Rodchenkov, the newspaper reported.
– Sports Writer James Ellingworth reporting from St. Petersburg, Russia.

