Cross-country skiing: striking blood values: One third of all cross-country skiing medals have been suspicious since 2001

Some one-third of all cross-country skiing medals at the Olympic Games and World Championships since 2001 have probably been won by athletes suspected of being doping. This is the result of a report by the ARD doping editorial office and the Sunday Times in the research association with SVT and REPUBLIK. CH. Among the suspicious successes are 91 gold medals, and German athletes should also be affected.

The research network is based on a database transmitted by a whistleblower, which contains around 10,000 blood tests of 2,000 cross-country skiers from the years 2001 to 2010, i. e. until the introduction of biological passports. Blood values were classified as “abnormal” if there was a chance of 1:100 or less that they could have been produced naturally.

Shortly before the Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang (9. till 25. February) threatens a new doping scandal: more than 50 cross-country skiers who have qualified for the upcoming matches are to appear in the said database with abnormal blood values. These suggest that athletes have cheated in the past without being sanctioned.

“There are a significant number of medal winners who have had abnormal or highly abnormal results in their blood profile, which is a clear sign of doping,”the research association quotes the American anti-doping expert James Stray-Gundersen, who together with another specialist was entrusted with evaluating the database. Stray-Gundersen previously worked for the FIS Ski Federation, among others.

A total of 290 of the cross-country skiers listed in the database showed abnormal results: Russia was the “front-runner” among the nations with 51 athletes, followed by Germany with 22 athletes. 76 percent of all Russian medals at that point in time were won by athletes with suspicious blood values.