Bobsledder is latest Russian to fail doping test
Olympic bobsledder Nadezhda Sergeeva has become the latest Russian athlete to test positive for a banned performance-enhancing drug.
The Russian bobsleigh federation said in a post on its official Facebook page on Friday that the athlete had tested positive on Feb. 18, five days after a previous doping test returned a negative result for her.
Sergeeva piloted the Russian sled to 12th in the women’s competition on Wednesday and denies taking the ‘banned heart medication’ mentioned by the statement, and the federation said it was not Meldonium, for which Russian curler Alexander Krushelnitsky was banned earlier this week.
The 30 year-old Sergeeva has previously failed a test for Meldonium, becoming one of over 100 athletes to fall foul of the drug’s re-classification in 2016.
She said at the time:
am just shocked about this news, because I am certain that I took this medication only at the end of last year, strictly under the instructions of the doctors from the Federal Medical-Biological Agency as well as cardiologists,” the 28-year-old told the R-Sport news agency.
“Of course, both the doctors who prescribed me this substance and I myself were one hundred percent certain that the meldonium would only stay in my system for two or three days and then by 1 January I would be completely clean.”