Russian minister denies covering up doping

A new report from Germany’s ARD includes “allegations of an email trail tying the Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko to the hiding of a positive doping result from a Russian soccer star”, CBC’s Adrienne Arsenault reports.

The fourth part of the explosive series, “The Secret World of Doping: Showdown for Russia”, was broadcast on ARD late last night.

Pressure on Mutko mounted when the World Anti-Doping Association (WADA) publicized the results in November 2015 of a lengthy investigation charging Russian Federation with utilizing a systemic and widespread sports-doping program.

In mid-May, The New York Times published an article alleging that dozens of Russian athletes, including 15 medalists of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, were doping.

“Starting in 2012 I tried to do everything to catch Rodchenkov for something serious to have legal grounds to fire him”, Zhelanova told R-Sport news agency.

The IAAF will decide whether Russian Federation has done enough to have the ban repealed at a meeting in Vienna on June 17.

The authors claim that Russia’s coach Viktor Chegin, former head of the Olympic Training Center of the Republic of Mordovia, keeps working with Russian athletes after being banned for life, reports Tass.

Russia’s sports minister Vitaliy Mutko has come under fresh criticism after a German documentary claims he was directly involved in covering up cheating and avoiding bans for athletes.

It added that all implicated athletes would be denied the right to participate in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games.

Russian state sports channel Match TV previously reported that 10 Russian medallists had tested positive in retests from Beijing alone. But no one will ever prove them, not those that are against the state, not those targeting me, ” the minister said.

ARD’s documentary film contained an email exchange, allegedly within Russian sports ministry circles, suggesting that Mutko would have been consulted in 2014 over the doping agent Hexarelin in laboratory readings for a Russian first division football player.

He said he had sent an informer, a certain “Sergey”, to Adler to film this.

“This is a deliberate attack on Russian Federation, calm and organized”.

“Rodchenkov works for the people that have given him refuge”.

Moscow will treat unfounded allegations about doping in Russian sport as “absolute slander”, the Kremlin said, as Russia remains embroiled in a scandal that could see its athletes miss the Rio Olympics.

Mutko also noted that the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office is investigating all the facts connected with the doping scandal, and might soon launch criminal cases.

“My advisor Natalia Zhelanova drew attention to all these things”.