LAUSANNE, Switzerland—In the first formal disqualification of a Tokyo Olympics athlete for doping, Russian Igor Polyanskiy has been banned for three years, World Triathlon said on over the weekend.
Polyanskiy admitted doping with EPO, an endurance boosting hormone, ahead of the Olympics and is banned until during the 2024 Paris Games.
World Triathlon added Polyanskiy did not dispute his positive test in a sample taken at a training camp in Vladivostock, Russia, five days before he began competing in Tokyo.
The positive test was notified after he placed 43rd in the men’s race and helped the Russian Olympic Committee quartet finish 14th in the mixed relay. He was 31st in the men’s event at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
He and the Russia team were disqualified and their Tokyo results annulled, World Triathlon said.
Because the 31-year-old Polyanskiy admitted the charge, he got a one-year reduction from the potential four-year sanction by a World Triathlon tribunal.
He is cleared to compete again on August 10, 2024, one day before the Paris closing ceremony.
A Russian volleyball player who won the gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics also has accepted a nine-month doping ban for a positive test which was apparently concealed eight years ago, the International Volleyball Federation said Wednesday.
The FIVB said Dmitry Musersky signed a “case resolution agreement” accepting the ban and admitting he tested positive for the banned stimulant methylhexaneamine at a Russian competition in 2013. Under the rules in force at the time, he could have faced a two-year ban. The ban is backdated from April and expires January 4.
The case was part of a package of database files and samples obtained by the World Anti-Doping Agency from the Moscow anti-doping lab, where WADA found test results were often falsified or never entered the system.
Speaking to state news agency RIA Novosti, Musersky said his test result had been “hidden both from me and from WADA.” He said he had not knowingly taken any banned substance and said the “very small” amount of the drug could have entered his system through contaminated food.