PYEONGCHANG (South Korea), Feb 14: Biathlon world champion Yekaterina Iourieva and two Russian team-mates have been barred from the world championships after testing positive for banned substances in a systematic doping scheme, the sport’s governing body said on Friday.

Follow-up tests confirmed positive results for Iourieva and team-mates Albina Akhatova and Dmitri Yaroshenko, the International Biathlon Union (IBU) said.

“We are facing systematic doping on a large scale in one of the strongest teams of the world,” IBU President Anders Besseberg told reporters on the eve of the world championships in Pyeongchang.

He did not disclose which banned substance or substances were found. The tests were conducted at a World Cup event in Ostersund, Sweden, in December.

The three athletes have been provisionally suspended and will face an IBU disciplinary panel once the federation receives full results from a testing laboratory in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The athletes risk two-year bans that could rule them out of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

“Either we have been able to catch them all, or we have only seen the top of the ice mountain,” Besseberg stated. “There is no, absolutely no, excuse for what the three doped Russian athletes and the people behind them have done.”

The Russian Biathlon Union said it would conduct its own investigation.

“This situation yet again shows that the work of the RBU needs systematic overhaul,” RBU President Mikhail Prokhorov said in Moscow.

He said measures could include reorganising medical support work for biathletes.

Besseberg said there were no further positive tests, denying recent news reports in Europe that the IBU was investigating a total of eight doping cases.

The IBU said last week that it had provisionally suspended an unspecified number of athletes for testing positive for banned substances but did not identify the competitors.

The confirmation on Friday comes as athletes prepare to compete in the first biathlon worlds to be held in Asia.—AP