A Russian curler named Alexander Krushelnitsky has been charged formally with a doping offence by the Court of Arbitration for Sport after he was found positive for the use of a prohibited substance named meldonium. It’s possible that Alexander will have his bronze medal stripped from him that he won with his wife, Anastasia Bryzaglova last week.
There are also some concerns about the International Olympic Committee’s choice to get 168 Russians to compete under a flag that was neutral. This was despite the country’s huge anti-doping program that was held in Sochi Four years ago.
What Is The Drug Meldonium And Why Did He Take It?
Just as Krushelnitsky was about to leave the Winter Olympics on Monday, his teammates insisted that the was innocent. Most said that they were shocked by what happened and that there must have been some kind of mistake. This disbelief was due to the fact that it’s hard to imagine what kind of drugs someone could possibly use in the sport of curling.
The athlete told officials in Russia that he fears that a teammate who was not selected for the Olympics secretly injected his drink with meldonium during training before he decided to travel to South Korea for the Olympics. The drug was banned in 2016 and caught out former number 1 tennis play Maria Sharapova from being able to play for 15 months.
The president of the Russian curling federation, Dmitry Svishchev, stated that Russian curlers were tested on the 22nd of Jan before flying out to South Korea to complete in the Olympics. He stated that only a crazy person would use banned substances before a competition, and that it raises a lot of questions.
