Four doping Russians snared in IOC crackdown

LAUSANNE: Four more Russian competitors were snared on Thursday in the International Olympic Committee’s targeted drive to root out doping at the Games, the IOC said.

The quartet had their doping samples from the London 2012 Olympics reanalysed — the IOC has been using new technology to retest samples from 2012 and the 2008 Beijing Games and has caught dozens of drug cheats.

The four have all been retroactively disqualified from the London Games.

The IOC named the Russians as: weightlifter Khadzhimurat Akkaev, 31; Mariia Bespalova, 30, who came 11th in the hammer; Gulfiya Khanafeeva, 34, 16th in the hammer; and triple jumper Victoria Valyukevich, 34, who was eighth in the event.

All four took the banned steroid turinabol.

The IOC has reanalysed 1,545 samples from the London and Beijing Games and caught more than 100 drug cheats as a result.