Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said the news of the positive tests certainly does not look good.
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The Spanish Olympic Committee says it has been notified that one of its athletes tested positive in a reanalysis of doping samples from the 2008 Beijing Games.
Russian Federation faces being stripped of Olympic medals from nine events, including seven in track and field, at the Beijing Games in 2008, after the retesting of samples using new techniques.
“The Spanish Olympic Committee expresses its full support for the latest actions taken by the International Olympic Committee in favor of a clean sport, ” the Spanish committee said in its statement on Wednesday.
The IOC earlier said up to 31 athletes could be banned from August’s Rio Games.
Match TV in Russian Federation and Tass named the bronze medal-winning high-jumper Anna Chicherova, who won gold at London 2012, among those who tested positive from Beijing.
Bronze medal winners who tested positive were Ekaterina Volkova in the 3,000 steeplechase, men’s 4×400 relay team member Denis Alexeyev, race walker Denis Nizhegorodov, and weightlifter Nadezhda Yevstukhina.
He said “serious work” had been carried out, citing the presence of global observers at Russia’s anti-doping agency RUSADA and a rigorous staff overhaul at the Russian Athletics Federation.
Russia’s Sports Ministry said cheats would be punished.
Russian Federation has been suspended from athletics competition by the IAAF since November following allegations of state-sponsored doping made in a WADA-commissioned independent report.
The 29-year-old received a further doping suspension of two years after a failed test for fordimethylpentylamine in July 2011 before failing for anabolic steroids at last year’s Spanish Athletics Championships, after which she was awarded a lifetime ban.
Dikunets said she was “very surprised” by Rodchenkov’s allegations and denied any malpractice among her laboratory staff at the Sochi facility but declined to comment on Rodchenkov’s work.
Spanish media also reported that it was Nigerian-born Onyia who tested positive in Beijing.
“Our performance director in Beijing, Dave Collins, basically got sacked because he didn’t reach his medal target, he only got four out of the predicted five”.
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“We don’t know the results of the tests and didn’t control anything – it was the IOC’s lab and everything was then sent to Lausanne for storage. Not only would it be a nice consolation prize for all us athletes who were deprived of a rightful medal but it would show that the International Olympic Committee are acknowledging the issue”.
