LAUSANNE: Four Russian bobsledders were banned on Wednesday until December 2020 for their part in organised doping at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

The four include Alexander Zubkov, who carried Russia’s flag at the opening ceremony for the Sochi Games and won two gold medals which have already been stripped for doping.

Nearly five years after the Sochi Olympics, these are the first cases in any sport with athletes receiving full bans as a result of Russia’s doping sample swaps at the games, rather than only being disqualified from the competition itself.

All were banned for two years by the International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation, which accepted an earlier Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling that they were part of a scheme to swap steroid-tainted samples for clean urine.

The sanctions bar them from any role in the sport, which in Zubkov’s case would include his role as president of the Russian Bobsled Federation. However, that could be complicated by Zubkov’s own legal maneuvers in Russia.

In November, he won a ruling from a Moscow court that the earlier CAS verdict did not apply in Russia, and an appeal by the Russian Olympic Committee was rejected last week.

The International Olympic Committee is still demanding Zubkov return his medals.

The other Russians banned by the IBSF were Alexander Kasyanov, Aleksei Pushkarev and Ilvir Khuzin. Of those, Pushkarev and Kasyanov have competed this season in the bobsled World Cup, recording a pair of 13th-place finishes at an event last month in Latvia.

Two more bobsledders’ cases are still ongoing, including that of Alexei Voevoda, who entered the Russian parliament in 2016.

Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2019