Further shadow cast over Olympic Games as latest drugs controversy set to see 31 athletes banned for Rio de Janeiro
This summer’s Olympics are set to be plunged into disarray after it was confirmed that 31 athletes face bans following the retesting of doping samples from the 2008 Beijing Games.
The 31 athletes, spanning 12 nationalities and six sports, now face the prospect of suspension after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) concluded their retesting of 454 selected samples from eight years ago.
With only 79 days to go before the Rio de Janeiro Games, the IOC is also close to completing the analysis of 250 retests of specimens taken from London 2012, as the governing body aims to restore the reputation of sports tarnished by drugs misuse.
“All these measures are a powerful strike against the cheats we do not allow to win,” said IOC president Thomas Bach. “They show once again that dopers have no place to hide. We keep samples for 10 years so that the cheats know that they can never rest.
“By stopping so many doped athletes from participating in Rio, we are showing once more our determination to protect the integrity of the Olympic competition.”
These revelations follow a disastrous 12 months for athletics which saw Russia banned from international competition in November after a World Anti-Doping commission report exposed a programme of state-sponsored drugs misuse.
The IOC are also planning to reanalyse Russian samples from the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi following allegations it again operated a state-sponsored doping programme.
Russia’s sport minister Vitaly Mutko said this week that his country was “ashamed” of its cheating athletes but that a failure to lift the ban ahead of the Olympic Games would be “unfair and disproportionate”.
World governing body the International Association of Athletic Federations is set to decide whether Russia has made enough progress in resolving its anti-doping mechanisms at its next council meeting on 17 June.