BEIJING, Aug 6: The Russian team on Wednesday denied accusations of systematic doping among its athletes and questioned the timing of the announcements days before the Beijing Olympics that several of them had failed drugs tests.

Some of the country’s leading medal hopes, including track and field athletes, a cyclist and a race walker, have been expelled or suspended from the Games in the past week after failed tests and accusations of switching urine samples.

The head of Russia’s athletics federation on Wednesday said doping was “a sporting crime” and called for criminal charges against athletes who use banned performance enhancing drugs.

When asked on Tuesday about the latest case of three walkers, the head of the International Olympic Committee’s medical commission, Arne Ljungqvist, said it appeared to be an example of “systematic, planned doping”.

Russian Olympic Committee spokesman Gennady Shvets said it was far too early to talk about any such thing.

“It is strange that someone has said there is systematic doping. These situations are very unpleasant but to say it is systematic is premature,” he said.

“When in the United States they discovered the Balco laboratories, it was sad but they didn’t say that the whole of U.S. sport was involved in doping,” he added, referring to the San Francisco lab which provided top athletes with drugs.

Shvets said officials had known about the results for months and the decision to wait until just before the Games seemed to be designed to make life difficult for the Russian team.

“These results were known ages ago, [but] they decided to release them just before the Olympic Games,” said Shvets.

“There is a feeling that they did it especially to create unpleasantness for us,” he added.

“No one is excusing the athletes who broke the WADA [World Anti-Doping Agency] code.” —Reuters