Swimming's world governing body FINA said on Wednesday that it has taken a "robust" approach towards anti-doping procedures involving Russian swimmers following revelations about the country's athletics programme. FINA's remarks followed an investigation carried out by British newspaper The Times that claimed to have unearthed evidence of "systematic" doping in Russian swimming.
Russian athletes have been banned from international competition after a World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) report uncovered evidence of state-sponsored doping and The Times said the situation in Russian swimming was similar. But FINA said: "While FINA is not aware of any concrete evidence of systemic doping in Russian swimming, we have taken a particularly robust approach to our anti-doping procedures in relation to Russia and Russian competitions, in light of WADA's recent investigation."
FINA called on The Times to share its evidence and said that in the wake of November's WADA independent commission report into doping in Russian athletics, it took steps to firm up its own anti-doping procedures. "Following the results of the WADA investigation, FINA issued a directive to ensure the continued integrity of the testing programme," FINA added.
"The entirety of FINA's unannounced out-of-competition doping control programme in Russia is now conducted by a third-party independent of FINA and RUSADA (the Russian Anti-doping Agency), the Swedish company IDTM." FINA pointed out that samples taken during the 2015 Aquatics World Championships, which took place in the Russian city of Kazan, had been analysed in a WADA-accredited laboratory in Moscow, supervised by independent observers.
FINA said that "the great majority" of samples collected in 2015 from Russian swimmers based in Europe had been analysed in WADA-accredited laboratories in Cologne and Barcelona. Samples taken from Russian swimmers based outside Europe were sent either to Montreal or Salt Lake City. It added: "One hundred percent of samples collected in Russia will be analysed in these overseas laboratories in 2016."
The Times claimed in its Wednesday edition that Sergei Portugalov, the doctor said to be the mastermind behind doping in Russian athletics, had pushed swimmers on Russia's national team to take performance-enhancing drugs. The paper cited a witness who testified that "pills and medicines" were available by the side of the pool during one competition in Moscow.
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