MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The International Olympic Committee has disqualified five Russian athletes over anti-doping rules violations allegedly discovered in the course of the probe into Sochi 2014 games and banned them from all subsequent Olympic Games, the IOC said in a statement.
"The IOC Disciplinary Commission, composed for these five cases of Mr Denis Oswald (Chair), Mrs Gunilla Lindberg and Mr Tony Estanguet, decided the following: Sergei Chudinov, Aleksei Negodailo, Dmitrii Trunenkov, Yana Romanova and Olga Vilukhina are found to have committed anti-doping rule violations pursuant to Article 2 of The International Olympic Committee Anti-Doping Rules applicable to the XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, in 2014, and are disqualified from the events in which they participated," the statement read.
The document also stated that all of the athletes were disqualified from all "editions of the Games of the Olympiad and the Olympic Winter Games subsequent to the Olympic Winter Games Sochi 2014."
IOC also said in its press release later that available evidence shows that samples collected from Russian athletes at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi could be opened without leaving marks on them,
"Regarding samples which were not found with T marks or only with isolated T-marks, no firm conclusion can be drawn. However, other available evidence effectively establishes that samples could be opened without leaving marks or only single T-Marks. Prof. Champod confirmed that this was possible," a paper on reasoning for the decision on Russian skier Alexander Legkov read.
In the paper, "T-marks" stand for tool marks as classified by professor of Criminology at the University of Lausanne Christophe Champod, who was appointed by the IOC as an expert to perform a forensic analysis of the bottles.
