Doping bans for 12 Russians in track and field cases going back over a decade

Russia’s Elena Kotulskaya, left, competes in a women’s 800-meter heat at the World Athletics Championships in the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow, Russia

The Russian doping crisis which rocked track and field in the 2010s reached a symbolic end on Friday with bans and disqualifications for 12 athletes in a final set of disciplinary cases going back over a decade.

The Athletics Integrity Unit, which was founded in 2017 as part of track’s response to the doping crisis, said it was the “last batch” of doping cases using data from the shuttered Moscow anti-doping laboratory where cases were covered up.

That evidence, along with findings from World Anti-Doping Agency investigator Richard McLaren, “exposed the state-sponsored Russian doping scandal,” the AIU said in a post on X. The Russian government has consistently denied wrongdoing.

Working through that mountain of data has meant years of work for the AIU and other anti-doping bodies.

They prioritized cases involving active and high-profile athletes, so the 12 named on Friday were long-since retired athletes or relatively obscure figures. The best known was arguably Elena Kotulskaya, the European indoor silver medalist in the 800 meters in 2013.

The AIU’s case document said Kotulskaya was banned for four years in relation to apparent cover-ups involving three separate positive samples from 2013. It said she didn’t respond to formal notifications about the case.

In cases spanning the whole range of track and field events, others among the 12 sanctioned on Friday included athletes from sprint events, race walking, jumps and a pentathlete.

Four of the athletes had already been banned in earlier cases and for one, middle-distance runner Svetlana Karamasheva, it was the third doping ban of her career.

The cases concerned doping cover-ups from as long ago as 2013 and involved various steroids and banned substances.

Russia remains banned from international track and field over the invasion of Ukraine. World Athletics and the AIU have previously voiced concerns over how to ensure a level playing field on doping issues when Russia is eventually readmitted. MDT/AP