Russian athletics coach banned for 10 years

ZURICH: Vladimir Mokhnev, former athletics coach of Russian whistleblower Yuliya Stepanova, has been banned for 10 years for offences involving banned substances, said the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

In the same ruling, Anastasiya Bazdyreva, an 800 metres runner, was suspended for two years for the “use or attempted use by an athlete of a prohibited substance or a prohibited method”.

CAS said it was acting as the decision-making authority instead of the All Russia Athletics Federation (ARAF), banned by the global athletics body IAAF last year following allegations of widespread and state-sponsored doping.

Mokhnev was “found to have violated the IAAF rules relating to possession, trafficking and administration of banned substances and/or methods”, CAS said in a statement on Friday.

CAS said he trained a number of elite Russian athletes including Stepanova who helped expose state-backed doping in Russian sport and fled the country.

Middle-distance runner Stepanova, who served a two-year ban for blood passport abnormalities in 2013, provided evidence to a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) independent commission whose report led to Russia’s suspension by the IAAF.