28 Russians have Olympic doping bans lifted

Twenty-eight Russian athletes had their Olympic doping bans overturned, throwing the International Olympic Committee’s policy on Russian doping into turmoil.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling on Thursday was set to reinstate Russia seven medals from the 2014 Sochi Olympics, including gold in men’s skeleton and men’s 50-kilometer cross-country skiing.

Eleven more were ruled to have been guilty of doping, but had lifetime bans imposed by an International Olympic Committee disciplinary panel two months ago cut to a ban only from the Pyeongchang Games which open Feb. 9.

The 28 who had their bans lifted could now seek late entry into the Pyeongchang Olympics — suggesting a chaotic few days ahead for the IOC and winter sports governing bodies before the games open Feb. 9.

In the urgent verdicts announced Thursday, the two CAS judging panels who heard 39 appeal cases last week in Geneva — and took testimony from Russian whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov — did not give detailed reasons.

“In 28 cases, the evidence collected was found to be insufficient to establish that an anti-doping rule violation (ADRV) was committed by the athletes concerned,” the sports court said in a statement.

CAS said it “unanimously found that the evidence put forward by the IOC in relation to this matter did not have the same weight in each individual case.”

The 11 whose appeals were rejected came from men’s bobsled, women’s cross-country skiing and women’s ice hockey.

They included two-time bobsled gold medalist Alexander Zubkov. His re-tested samples had abnormal levels of salt, suggesting his urine tainted with steroid was swapped in the Sochi testing laboratory with previously stored clean urine, as Rodchenkov alleged.

Still, the CAS rulings will be seen as a victory for Russia, which has long denied it ran a state-backed doping program.

“It’s a big victory for them and I’m relieved that justice has finally been done,” said Philippe Baertsch, a lawyer for the athletes, told the Associated Press, said of the 28 who were cleared. “This confirms what they’ve been saying since day one, namely that they are and they’ve always been clean athletes, and that they were wrongly sanctioned without any evidence.”

The IOC has already invited 169 Russians to the Pyeonchang Olympics under a neutral flag, but may now be forced to allow in athletes it deems dopers, eight days before the Games begin.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many of the 28 Russians would now seek to compete. Some have already retired from competitive sports.

Those reinstated at the Sochi Olympics include skeleton gold medalist Alexander Tretiakov and cross-country ski gold medalist Alexander Legkov. Russia won’t win back some medals, such as in the men’s 4-man bobsled, where two crew members were disqualified and two reinstated. Both of the gold medal-winning two-man bobsled crew remain banned.

The IOC last year banned 43 Russians over doping offenses at the Sochi Olympics, ruling they had been part of a scheme to dope.

The Russian director of the laboratory which handled samples for the Sochi Games, Grigory Rodchenkov, said he gave cocktails of banned steroids to athletes and swapped tainted samples for clean urine on orders from Russian state sports officials.

The Russian government vehemently denies ever supporting doping.

Three more appeals, all involving retired biathlon competitors, will be heard later.

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AP Sports Writer Graham Dunbar in Geneva contributed to this report.