WADA suspects 300 Russian athletes of doping
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) sent the names of 300 Russian athletes suspected of doping to the international sports federations, Deutsche Welle reports.
On Thursday, December 14th, the sports British edition, Inside the Games, reported that the names of 300 athletes, including the representatives of both summer and winter sports and those who want to participate in the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, had been selected from a list of 10,000 names available to informant Grigory Rodchenkov. These were the athletes whose doping tests were positive, but which were later justified by the results of repeated inspections conducted from 2012 to 2015.
WADA believes that this list will help bring to an end the "deadlocked" investigations and increase the number of disqualified athletes.
Earlier WADA stated that it intends to investigate doping tests from Russian football players beginning in mid-January 2018. It impacts dozens of Russian players, including members of the Russian national team.
On December 5th, the International Olympic Committee suspended the Russian national team from participating in the Games in Pyeongchang. The head of the IOC, Thomas Bach, called the interference in doping tests by Russia, "an unprecedented attack on the Olympic movement and sport." Therefore, according to him, the IOC imposed well-balanced sanctions in response to systematic manipulations.