The Russia U18 team has been hit with a team doping scandal just a week before the IIHF World U18 Championships were set to begin.
Slava Malamud reports a majority of the men’s Russian U18 tested positive for Meldonium and are likely to be replaced by the U17 roster. He further reports that head coach Sergey Golubovic has been fired.
Here’s Allhockey.ru’s report (roughly translated):
“The junior team of Russia (U18) may miss the Junior World Championship due to problems with doping. As it became known AllHockey.Ru, in samples of the absolute majority of the players of this team meldonium found that from 2016 is prohibited . Prokhorov’s team can replace the team of players born in 1999 , coached by Sergey Golubovic.
Meldonium was added on the World Anti-Doping Agency list of banned substances in January of this year. The drug is the same substance that caused Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova to fail a drug test at the Australian open.
According to the Guardian, the drug is used to treat a lack of blood flow and manufactured in Baltic countries and Russia and isn’t approved outside of those regions. As Deadspin notes, there seems to be a cultural disconnect between Russia and WADA, as Meldonium is available as an over the counter medicine. Sharapova claims to have used to for over 10 years and other athletes have used it in training.
The case appears to be a messy one, as the Russian U18 team may have used a drug that was recently banned, but is common in Russian training. There’s been no official decision on what’s to happen with the roster.