MOSCOW, February 6 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that his country's Olympic team should be provided with strong medical, administrative and legal support at the upcoming games in Italy.
Putin met Monday with President of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) Leonid Tyagachyov and head of the organizing committee for the Olympics in Turin, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov, to discuss the prospects for the Russian team at the 2006 Winter Olympics on February 10-26.
Putin said athletes should not think about doping issues and just focus on their performances, while the ROC handles other issues.
Zhukov said he hoped Russian athletes would not have any problems with doping-control this year.
"The Federal Agency for Physical Culture and Sport did serious work on anti-doping control," Zhukov said. "We had the best experts working for us and we hope that this time we will have no problems."
Russian cross-country skiers Larisa Lazutina and Olga Danilova were stripped of their medals and banned from participating in the sport for two years after they tested positive for doping at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah.
According to Olympic figure-skating champion and chairwoman of the all-Russian volunteer society Sports Russia Irina Rodnina, Russia has one of the top three anti-doping laboratories in the world this year. But, Rodnina, who participated in an on-line conference on the Olympics Monday, said that the country could face having some of its athletes test positive for banned drugs.
Earlier, Nikolai Durmanov, the head of the anti-doping service of the Russian Federal Agency for Physical Culture and Sport, said that even cutting-edge laboratories could not detect all doping incidents.
"No ultra-modern laboratories can guarantee the prevention of doping scandals," Durmanov said. "Unfortunately, not all problems can be avoided after tests at a domestic level."
