A leader of Russia's national anti-doping agency RusADA said there will be no doping-related scandals at the upcoming February 12-28 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver.
"We can say with full conviction: we have done all that depends on us for all Russian athletes to leave for Vancouver checked and 'clean,'" Alexander Derevoyedov said.
"And I want to express hope and conviction that there will be no scandals with our Olympic athletes at the Games," he said at a press conference held at RIA Novosti on Wednesday.
Derevoyedov said Vancouver will have very strict doping control procedures. "I would like to believe all our athletes realize this," he said.
However Igor Vykhodets, a senior medical official at the Russian Medical Biological Agency, recently said doping-related cases among Russian athletes are still a possibility at the 2010 Winter Olympics, though their preliminary tests proved negative in Moscow.
Vykhodets in late January cited "the experience of previous Olympic Games," which, he said, "casts doubt that the athletes who left our country 'clean' will continue behaving the same way [there]."
This comes in the wake of Russian female skier Alyona Sidko's disqualification over doping-use charges.
The Russian ski federation disqualified Sidko, the 2006 Olympic bronze medalist, for two years and excluded her from the national Olympic team after she tested positive for the use of doping at a Russian skiing competition last month.
Russian athletes have been recently plagued by doping-related cases and subsequent disqualifications. Last month, the International Ski Federation (FIS) alone disqualified two Russian female skiers, Yulia Chepalova and Natalia Matveyeva, on accusations of doping use.
Before the opening of the 2008 Olympics in China, seven Russian female athletes were disqualified from the Games after they were ruled to have switched urine samples before tests for performance-enhancing drugs.
The problem of performance-enhancing drugs was raised at the state level by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last February, who urged tougher penalties for those athletes using drugs and proposed establishing a state doping control system.
MOSCOW, February 3 (RIA Novosti)
