MOSCOW (AP) – Irina Maracheva was stripped of her 800-meter silver medal from the 2012 European Championships in one of four doping cases announced Monday involving female Russian athletes.
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Maracheva and walker Anna Lukyanova, a former silver medallist at the world junior championships, have been given a two-year ban, while middle-distance runners Maria Nikolaeva and Yelena Nikulina were handed four-year bans, Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) said in a statement.
The Olympic Committee said the Russian Anti-Doping Agency had banned Nikulina and Nikolaeva for four years.
Further details about the bans have not been made public.
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Russia’s Olympic Committee took control of the sport after the IAAF provisionally suspended the federation.
Russian Federation will only be reinstated if it fulfils strict criteria, including compliance with all World Anti-Doping Agency and IAAF anti-doping rules.
She was promoted up the order as the race was won by another Russian, Yelena Arzhakova, who was later banned for two years in 2013 after abnormalities were found in her biological passport.
The 31-year-old Maracheva is the most high profile of the quartet after her silver in the 800 metres at the 2012 European Championships in Helsinki, although she originally finished third in the Finnish capital.
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A spokeswoman for the Russian athletics federation said the visit by the IAAF taskforce would be a “low-key meeting behind closed doors”.
