Danil Lysenko: Five Russian athletics officials banned for anti-doping violations involving high jumper

Danil Lysenko followed up silver at the 2017 World Championships with gold at the World Indoors

Former Russian athletics president Dmitry Shlyakhtin and four other senior officials have been banned for four years for anti-doping rule breaches.

A disciplinary tribunal upheld all charges from the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) into violations involving high jumper Danil Lysenko.

A 2019 investigation concluded "false explanations and forged documents" had been used to explain the violations.

"These are offences of the utmost seriousness," the tribunal said.

One of the officials, former Russian Athletics Federation (Rusaf) board member Artur Karamyan, was also guilty of tampering, complicity, failing to report an anti-doping rule violation and failing to co-operate with the AIU investigation.

The other three officials named are former Rusaf executive director Alexander Parkin, senior administrator Elena Orlova and anti-doping co-ordinator Elena Ikonnikova.

The tribunal added: "It appears that most if not all of the senior management of Rusaf were involved in this major fraud.

"This is quite shocking. Mr Shlyakhtin and Mr Karamyan, as senior individuals, must bear great responsibility of what happened."

Lysenko was provisionally suspended in 2018 after failing to file his whereabouts on three occasions in the space of a 12-month period, which constitutes an anti-doping rule breach.

His coach Evgeniy Zagorulko was suspended in 2019 following the AIU investigation.

The AIU said the cases against Lysenko and Zagorulko are still in progress.

Russia has been banned from competing as a nation in athletics since 2015 after a report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) found evidence of widespread doping in the sport.

In December 2019 the country was banned from all major sporting events for four years after Russia's Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) was declared non-compliant by Wada for manipulating laboratory data handed over to investigators.

That ban was later cut to two years by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

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