{"id":14565,"date":"2018-01-18T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/2018\/01\/18\/russian-athletes-withdraw-from-competition-when-drug-testers-arrive\/"},"modified":"2018-01-18T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-01-18T12:00:00","slug":"russian-athletes-withdraw-from-competition-when-drug-testers-arrive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/russian-athletes-withdraw-from-competition-when-drug-testers-arrive\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian Athletes Withdraw From Competition When Drug Testers Arrive"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Scott Neuman<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n Athletes compete in the 110-meter hurdles semifinal run during the national track and field championship in Moscow in July 2017.<\/p>\n

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Ivan Sekretarev\/AP<\/p>\n

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Ivan Sekretarev\/AP<\/p>\n

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More than 30 Russian athletes participating in Siberian Indoor Championships last weekend abruptly withdrew from competition when drug testers arrived at the event.<\/p>\n

According to the Russian sports website Championat, as many as 36 athletes cited various illnesses for withdrawing from the competition at the city of Irkutsk.<\/p>\n

Last month, Russian athletes were banned from competing under their nation’s flag<\/a> in the Winter Olympics that begin next month following allegations of a state-sponsored doping scheme involving athletes at the 2014 Games in Sochi.<\/p>\n

In 2016, one Russian athlete tried to bribe a drug tester and another ran out of the stadium during her own race to avoid being tested, the World Anti-Doping Agency says.<\/p>\n

As The Moscow Times notes<\/a>, “Russia has a checkered history with the use of banned performance-enhancing drugs by its athletes, a legacy of the Soviet Union backed by historical evidence and testing records.”<\/p>\n

The Russian track and field federation “has started an internal investigation” into the incident, according to Championat.<\/a><\/p>\n

Sergey Shubenkov, the 2015 world 110-meter hurdle champion, tweeted Wednesday that “Doping control drove in” and “a couple of dozen withdrew,” according to a translation used by the BBC.<\/a><\/p>\n