Former Russia track president banned in doping coverup case

Dmitry Shlyakhtin, head of the Russian track and field federation, speaks to journalists prior to the Russian Athletics Cup, in Zhukovsky, outside Moscow, Russia, Thursday, July 21, 2016. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

MONACO — An elaborate deception involving a fake medical clinic in a demolished building and made-up claims about a world champion athlete's car crash led to five senior Russian track and field officials being banned from the sport Wednesday.

Disciplinary rulings found former Russian track and field president Dmitry Shlyakhtin and his colleagues obstructed an anti-doping investigation into high jumper Danil Lysenko with forged documents and fake claims.

Shlyakhtin, who left the federation soon after charges were filed in 2019, was banned for four years.

“It appears that most if not all of the senior management of RusAF were involved in this major fraud. That is quite shocking,” the verdict in Shlyakhtin and board member Artur Karamyan's case reads, using an abbreviation for the federation.

The panel added that it viewed the maximum four-year sanction allowed by the rules as “grossly inadequate”.

In 2018, Lysenko was one of Russia's brightest young talents, granted coveted “neutral” status to compete at major international events despite RusAF being suspended for earlier doping offences. However, he faced a ban after being charged with missing a drug test and twice failing to provide details of his whereabouts so he could be reached for no-notice testing.

Shlyakhtin and other officials helped Lysenko cook up an explanation that a bout of appendicitis had landed him in the nonexistent “SD Clinic” in Moscow and left him unable to upload the required information about his whereabouts, the Athletics Integrity Unit's later investigation found.

Shlyakhtin urged Lysenko to undergo a battery of medical tests later, used to create realistic-looking fake records presented to investigators at the AIU. Lysenko and Karamyan drove together to view the address given for the “SD Clinic”, where a real clinic had once operated, but the building had been demolished, the investigation found.

Another RusAF official, Elena Orlova, compiled documents stating Lysenko had been involved in a June 2018 car crash to support a claim he was too distracted to let anti-doping authorities know of his whereabouts by the deadline of June 30, the AIU found. Investigators concluded the accident actually happened more than two weeks after the deadline had passed.

In a 15-month investigation, the AIU spotted contradictions in the evidence from Russia, including a change in the location where Lysenko was supposedly treated, and then uncovered the deception, following a trail of emails and WhatsApp messages implicating the five officials.

Executive director Alexander Parkin, who the AIU said admitted to knowing of the forgery plans, was banned for four years. Four-year sanctions were also handed to Orlova and the federation's anti-doping co-ordinator Elena Ikonnikova.

Orlova and Ikonnikova will serve those bans alongside longer sanctions imposed earlier of six and eight years respectively. That's because they didn't comply with a tribunal's orders to disclose evidence, opening up the possibility of longer sanctions than the standard four years in doping-related cases.

None of the five officials still works at RusAF.

Lysenko, a former world indoor champion and silver medallist at the 2017 world championships, and his coach Evgeny Zagorulko were also charged in 2019 and the case against them is ongoing. The federation, under new leadership, admitted wrongdoing in the case last year.

The case brought Russia, already suspended from international track and field over doping, to the brink of expulsion from governing body World Athletics when the charges were filed shortly after the 2019 world championships. It led to a lengthy freeze in talks aimed at reforming the sport in Russia to allow the federation to be reinstated before the Olympics in Tokyo.