CAS agrees contamination caused Russian Olympic doping

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 7:09 p.m. ET

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — The Court of Arbitration for Sport has lifted a provisional ban imposed on one of the two Russian athletes who tested positive for doping at the Pyeongchang Olympics.

CAS said Monday that a contaminated product caused bobsled driver Nadezhda Sergeeva's positive test for trimetazidine in South Korea in February.

The CAS anti-doping panel created for the 2018 Games had disqualified Sergeeva from her 12th-place finish.

Sergeeva's case with the panel continues, but any final sanction can be reduced to take into account the seven-month provisional ban she already served.

In April, a Russian federal medical official said "organizational fecklessness" led to Sergeeva's mother, a doctor, giving her unapproved heart medicine containing trimetazidine.

The second Russian doping case from Pyeongchang involved Alexander Krushelnitsky, who tested positive for meldonium in the mixed doubles curling competition. He and his wife, Anastasia Bryzgalova, were disqualified and stripped of their bronze medals.

A CAS panel is expected to give its verdict in Krushelnitsky's appeal case this month.