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Lead Stories: Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Suspensions for Russian Women in Doping Case

Posted October 20th, 2008 at 5:18 PM by Bob Ramsak

Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Olympics, Drugs In Sports

Russian middle distance runners Yelena Soboleva and Tatyana Tomashova were among seven athletes who were handed two-year bans by the All Russia Athletics Federation (ARAF) today, agencies are reporting.

The pair, along with middle distance runners Yulia Fomenko, Svetlana Cherkasova, and Olga Yegorova, and throwers Daria Pishchalnikova and Gulfiya Khanafeyeva, were provisionally suspended by the IAAF on the eve of the Olympic Games after a targeted investigation using DNA evidence found that they had tampered with the doping control process after fraudulently substituting urine.

Their bans are retroactive beginning on the dates that their samples were collected, according to the ARAF decision.
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After Year-Long Investigation, Russians Soboleva, Tomashova, Five Others Hit With Doping Suspensions

Posted July 31st, 2008 at 12:00 PM by Bob Ramsak

Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Olympics, Drugs In Sports

In a scandal that will likely leave the Russian women’s middle distance Olympic team in tatters, middle distance stars Yelena Soboleva and Tatyana Tomashova, along with five others, have been provisionally suspended for “tampering with the doping control process,” the IAAF announced today.

According to a statement issued by the IAAF, the athletes have been charged “for a fraudulent substitution of urine which is both a prohibited method and also a form of tampering with the doping control process.”

The athletes –middle distance runners Yulia Fomenko, Svetlana Cherkasova, and Olga Yegorova, and throwers Daria Pishchalnikova and Gulfiya Khanafeyeva were also named– were apparently targeted in a year-long investigation carried out by the global governing body.
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2008 Track & Field
Previews & Predictions:
Women’s Middle-Distance

Posted January 25th, 2008 at 5:25 PM by Jimmie R. Markham

Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Olympics

Maria Mutola recently announced that she will retire at the end of the 2008 season. That’s a shame because she has been the ambassador of women’s 800m running ever since she broke on the world-class middle-distance running scene in 1991 with a time of 1:57.63. Since then she’s run between 1:55.19 and 1:58.98 a staggering 108 times. The only other woman to come even close to running that many world-class times in the 800m has been the great Cuban runner Ana Quirot, who ran between 1:54.44 and 1:58.95 a total of 72 times between 1986 and 1997. The 800m event will truly be diminished when Mutola retires.
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