Russia slams Olympic doping allegations as 'slander by a turncoat'

In a Friday news conference on state television, Russian government officials adamantly denied claims leveled by the former director of the country's anti-doping laboratory, Grigory Rodchenkov, that Russian athletes at the 2014 Winter Olympics were involved in a government-sponsored doping ploy. President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, says Rodchenkov's allegation that the government ordered up a performance-enhancing cocktail that blended alcohol with three different anabolic steroids, which was then served to numerous medal-winning athletes, was "absolutely groundless."

"They are not substantiated by any trustworthy data, they are not backed by any sort of documents," Peskov said. "All this simply looks like slander by a turncoat." One of the athletes who was allegedly involved in the doping scheme, gold medalist bobsledder Alexander Zubkov, also denies partaking. "I have always been absolutely clean," Zubkov said.

Rodchenkov explained to The New York Times how more than 100 contaminated urine tests were removed from the testing lab in the dead of night in Sochi through a "hand-size hole" in the laboratory wall hidden by a cabinet. He says that bottles that were supposedly "tamper-proof" were then broken into undetected, allowing the doping ploy to ultimately go unnoticed.

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Russia won 33 medals in Sochi, the highest count of the 2014 Games. Rodchenkov recently fled Russia out of fear for his life.