800-year-old Russian specialist Kseniya Savina, who has been under a different ID for a number of years, has been sentenced to 12 years of suspension for providing false documents to justify a positive test for EPO, announced Wednesday. Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU). World-class athlete, with a personal best of 1: 59.97 over 800m, Kseniya Savina is not known for her record: the suspension of Russia since November 2015 for a huge doping scandal prevented her from defending her chances outside Russian borders.
But several media surveys, including the Russian site Match and AFP, revealed that Kseniya Savina had bypassed this suspension by participating from 2016 to 2018 in competitions in Europe (Belgium, France, Portugal, Czech Republic) under the identity of a Ukrainian ex-athlete friend, taking advantage of their physical resemblance. The Russian and Ukrainian federations are still investigating this fraud, which Kseniya Savina has denied.
The athlete told his federation to have ended his career
Kseniya Savina is sentenced Wednesday for another story, which also involves false documents. Controlled positive at the EPO in May 2018 during an internship in Ifrane in Morocco, Savina told IAU investigators that the prohibited substance came from a treatment reserved for her husband and coach Alexei Savin, a victim of insufficiency. renal, that their landlord would have inadvertently mixed with treatment followed by Kseniya Savina for his back pain.
To prove their good faith, the athlete and her husband provided IAU with a copy of Alexei Savin's diagnosis of kidney failure from a Simferopol clinic in Crimea: but the document turned out to be a fake , after verifications by IAU and the Russian anti-doping agency (RUSADA). For his positive control, his attempt to fraudulently explain, as well as for complicity, Kseniya Savina (29) is 12 years suspended, while her husband-coach Alexei Savin is suspended for 4 years. Both can still appeal, even if the athlete has already told his federation to have ended his career.