Doping fears rise ahead of biathlon worlds

Feb 9, 2009, 14:40 GMT

Hamburg - With just days to go until the start of the biathlon world championships in South Korea, it remains unclear how many skiers have failed dope tests.

'We have positive A-samples,' Anders Besseberg, president of the International Biathlon Union (IBU), told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa Monday.

Besseberg dismissed earlier media reports that up to eight biathletes have failed dope tests, saying that the IBU had 'never made public' the number of A-samples that had returned positive.

'We don't have eight positive A-samples,' he added.

Last week, the IBU provisionally suspended the athletes who submitted the positive doping tests at the World Cup opener in December.

The B-samples are expected to be tested in front of the athletes or their legal representatives by Tuesday at the latest with IBU general secretary Nicole Resch saying these results should be available by the weekend.

The world championships begin Friday in Pyeongchang with the first sprint medals given out on Saturday.

Although the names of the athletes haven't been made public, media reports claim three are Russian while L'Equipe reported that one was Austrian, an allegation the Austrian skiing federation (OeSV) strongly denied.

'The OeSV biathletes have undergone doping controls several times in recent weeks and following discussions with the national anti- doping agency (NADA) and the IBU there are absolutely no complaints,' said OeSV sporting director Markus Gandler in a statement.

'The Austrian ski federation will take legal steps against the L'Equipe newspaper because of this.'

Russian officials have acknowledged that the cases involve their team.

Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda last Wednesday named the three athletes, saying that World Cup leader and world champion Eketarina Iourieva, three-time world champion Albina Akhatova as well as two-time relay world champion Dmitri Yaroshenko were the suspects.

The paper cited unofficial sources in its report.

Yaroshenko has protested his innocence, telling the life.ru website on Thursday that he never doped in his life.

The athletes were allegedly caught blood doping with a new substance (not EPO or its third generation known as CERA) in target tests at the World Cup opener in Ostersund, Sweden, Russian media said.