Athletes flee event as drug testers arrive

More than 30 competitors withdrew from last weekend’s Siberian Indoor Championships in Irkutsk when drug testers arrived at the two-day event.

Russia’s anti-doping agency Rusada will be given the names of the athletes who left the regional competition, according to BBC Russian.

Sergey Shubenkov, the 2015 world 110m hurdle champion, tweeted: “Doping control drove in.

“Is that why a couple of dozen withdrew before the beginning?”

BBC Russian added that there would be no immediate disqualification because no-one was caught cheating.
Russia’s state news agency Tass report that Russian Athletics Federation president Dmitry Shlyakhtin said he was not surprised at what had happened.