Russia accuses doping whistleblower of modifying key data

Source: AP

By JAMES ELLINGWORTH

Russia is blaming the World Anti-Doping Agency’s star witness for modifying key laboratory data. His lawyer says that’s nonsense.

The Russian Investigative Committee, a major law enforcement agency, alleges that former Moscow anti-doping laboratory director Grigory Rodchenkov remotely changed test results from abroad after fleeing to the United States in 2015.

“All the evidence obtained by the investigation shows that Rodchenkov and unidentified persons intentionally made changes in the electronic database to distort the parameters and indicators of Russian athletes’ doping samples,” Russian Investigative Committee (IC) spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement Saturday.

Since leaving Russia, Rodchenkov has become a key witness for WADA, which ruled this month that the doping data — known as the LIMS database — was doctored to protect Russian athletes who failed drug tests while the data was in the custody of the IC.



FILE - In this May 24, 2016 file photo an employee of the Russia's national drug-testing laboratory holds a vial in Moscow, Russia. Russia is accused of manipulating an archive of doping data from a laboratory in Moscow, which was meant to be a peace offering to the World Anti-Doping Agency to solve earlier disputes. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

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