Nadezhda Sergeeva has some explaining to do.
Sergeeva, a bobsledder competing for the Olympic Athletes from Russia at the 2018 Olympics, failed a doping test after testing positive for a banned heart medication named trimetazidine, Russian bobsled federation president Alexander Zubkov announced Friday.
There’s an obvious reason why that’s bad news: Russia was officially banned from the 2018 Olympics as punishment for its systematic doping at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, forcing its athletes to compete under the “OAR” delegation.
But Sergeeva now is the second Russian athlete in Pyeongchang caught doping, as curler Alexander Krushelnitsky recently was stripped of his bronze medal after testing positive for meldonium.
The irony doesn’t stop there for Sergeeva, however: Prior to the Games, the 30-year-old proudly wore a T-shirt for a commercial shoot that read, of all things, “I Don’t Do Doping.”
She might want to remove that one from her closet.
In fact, Sergeeva, who finished 12th in the women’s two-man bobsled competition, spoke out against Russia’s ban following her final run.
“If we are here, and we are clean, we should be able to walk under our flag,” Sergeeva said when asked about the “OAR” label on her suit, via Yahoo Sports.
Sergeeva also observed at the beginning of the Olympics that other athletes appeared to be embracing members of the OAR delegation because they were “clean.”
“I don’t know why, but they’ve started talking to us more than ever before. I feel it. Maybe it’s a sign to them that we’re clean,” she told The Associated Press at the time.
The International Olympic Committee had considered reinstating the OAR prior to the closing ceremony to allow its athletes to walk under the Russian flag. It’s safe to say that’s off the table now, though.
