Kazakhstan's top biathletes lashed out at Austrian authorities Thursday over a doping raid which they said made them feel like criminals. Kazakhstan won two gold medals in biathlon in Japan on Thursday, but athletes said their celebrations were dampened by their experience a week earlier, when they were investigated and cleared of doping at the world titles at the Alpine resort of Hochfilzen. Austrian police raided the Kazakh team on February 8, seizing medical products, medicines and portable telephones and taking blood and urine samples from 10 athletes.
The tests came back negative and the International Biathlon Union (IBU) said it was not considering any disciplinary action, but competitors say they are still aggrieved by the events. Galina Vishnevskaya, who won the women's 7.5 kilometre sprint at the Asian Winter Games Thursday, said the Austrian police's actions had ruined her chances of doing well at the world championships.
The 23-year-old only managed 86th place in Austria, despite having just won two gold medals at the World University Games in Almaty. "This awful situation with doping suspicion got me completely out," she said. "It is very frustrating when you are treated like a criminal without any justification."
Austrian police said they carried out the raids after seizing doping-related material from a van that was found to belong to the Kazakh team. The Kazakh team has strongly denied any suggestions of wrongdoing. The Kazakhstan National Biathlon Federation said there was "absolutely no surprise" that the athletes were cleared of doping when the tests came back negative, but Vishnevskaya said the damage had already been done.
"We are clean, it was proved, but we got a very unpleasant experience of being judged without a single justification. This is not the way it should work," she said. Yan Savitskiy finished 24th in the men's 10km sprint at the world championship in Austria and said the team was "exhausted after the World Championships in Hochfilzen".
"Lots of work was given to participating at the world championships, plus the stressful days with seizures and interviews," he said. "We still did not get back our belongings and it is disturbing." Savitskiy won the Asian title, beating his team-mate Vassiliy Podkorytov as Kazakhstan took gold and silver.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.