Russia to bar athletes drinking beer at doping tests

MOSCOW (AP) — A beer with your urine sample? No longer in Russian sports.

Citing “aggressive” athletes and interference with drug-testing results, Russia has barred sportspeople from drinking alcohol when they’re tested for banned substances.

A post-race beer might help a dehydrated athlete produce a urine sample, but now they’ll have to stick to “large quantities of water” provided by the drug-testers, the Russian anti-doping agency’s deputy CEO, Margarita Pakhnotskaya, says.

She tells The Associated Press that drinking was a particular problem with track and field athletes, and “they’d be rude, a bit aggressive.” Beer was even found to interfere with the results of the “biological passport” program checking athletes for signs of drug use. Pakhnotskaya says “beer influenced it a lot. It could cause or hide some changes.”

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