Russian walker out of worlds due to doping investigation

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian walker Alexander Yargunkin will not compete in the world championships following reports that he has failed a drugs test, a Russian anti-doping agency (RUSADA) official said on Friday. The 33-year-old Yargunkin has given a positive test for the banned substance Erythropoietin, Russian media reported. "Yargunkin definitely won't compete at the world championships in Beijing. The sportsman has been temporarily suspended from competition while an investigation takes place," Nikita Kamaev, the executive director of RUSADA, told the R-Sport news agency. This will be the first world championships in which no Russian walkers will take part. "This news really was a shock for me," Yargunkin told the Sport-Express newspaper. "I received a phone call saying they had found EPO. Of course I did not take Erythropoietin. I was the only Russian walker who could have gone to Beijing. I was tested all the time. For all the years I have trained, there has never been a problem," Yargunkin added. The world championship 50km walk in Beijing takes place on Saturday. RUSADA announced in January that three Olympic walking champions, Olga Kaniskina, Valery Borchin, Sergei Kirdyapkin, as well as the 2011 world champion Sergei Bakulin and 2011 world silver medallist Vladimir Kanaykin had been suspended for doping infringements. All these athletes were trained by Russian coach Viktor Chegin. The Russian Athletics Federation suspended Chegin in July and said they would not be sending walkers to international events. (Reporting by Dmitriy Rogovitskiy, editing by Ed Osmond)