Brooklyn Nets Owner Mikhail Prokhorov Was Implicated In The Russian Olympic Doping Scandal

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Brooklyn Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov has apparently found himself wrapped up in the Russian Olympic doping scandal. According to reports, a whistleblower into the investigation that led to the International Olympic Committee banning Russia from the 2018 Pyeongchang Games may have pointed to the billionaire in a scheme to keep doping quiet with massive bribes.

Prokhorov, who bought the Nets in 2010, is also the president of Russia’s biathlon association. And while the sport isn’t as popular in the United States as other Olympic sports, it’s a huge deal in Russia. With the 2014 games hosted by Russia in Sochi, special attention was paid to winning medals for the home country.

Prokhorov promised he would resign if Russia didn’t win at least two gold medals in Sochi, and according to the Wall Street Journal he was credited with leading an anti-doping crackdown in a sport that’s often rife with violations.


But Prokhorov himself was allegedly involved in the cover-up of a potential doping scandal that would have rocked the Russian biathlon team shortly before the Sochi Games in 2014. Two weeks before the event, Russian biathlon team members were informed Ekaterina Iourieva and Irina Starykh had been disqualified for failing a doping test. According to a whistleblower, it was Prokhorov who paid “millions of rubles” to keep an athlete quiet about the doping program while others worked to discredit the results and run cover.

Rodchenkov says Rodionova later told him that Starykh was planning to reveal her doping regimen as orchestrated by Stanislav “Stasik” Dmietriev. Rodchenkov identifies him as a valuable source of Erythropoietin, otherwise known as EPO, providing Russian athletes with a form of the performance-enhancing drug that doping tests struggled to detect.

Starykh never went public with her first-hand knowledge of Russia’s doping scheme. Prokhorov paid the biathlete “millions of [rubles] to stay silent,” Rodchenkov said Rodionova told him.

There are a few denials to the claim in the piece, and it’s all very complicated, but it’s clear that there was a wide doping regime within various parts of the Russian Olympic Program. This report indicates that Prokhorov, at least in part, was allegedly part of the coverup.

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