MOSCOW (Reuters) - Four Russian skeleton athletes, including Olympic champion Alexander Tretyakov, have been banned for life from the Olympics after being found guilty of doping at the 2014 Sochi Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said on Wednesday. Tretyakov, Sochi bronze-medal winner Elena Nikitina, Maria Orlova and Olga Potylitsyna have been "found to have committed anti-doping rule violations," the IOC said in a statement. "The four athletes are declared ineligible to be accredited in any capacity for all editions of the Games of the Olympiad and the Olympic Winter Games subsequent to the Olympic Winter Games Sochi 2014," the IOC said. The IOC added it had disqualified the athletes from Sochi, effectively stripping Tretyakov and Nikitina of their Olympic medals. The IOC is set to decide next month on the participation of Russian competitors at the Pyeongchang winter Olympics in South Korea in February.

Source: The Star November 22, 2017 13:15 UTC