Further investigations under way as race walker Elena Lashmanova is accused of competing in December despite being banned and additional claims of corruption within Russian Athletics surface

The Russian athletics federation has been accused of further corruption following allegations that race walker Elena Lashmanova competed in December while serving a doping ban.

Lashmanova, who won Olympic 20km race walk gold at London 2012, was banned from February 26, 2014, to February 25, 2016, after she tested positive for a banned substance in a sample given on January 4, 2014.

Claims that the 22-year-old had breached her ban began to emerge earlier this month, following the publication online of photographs appearing to show Lashmanova competing at the Mordovia Race Walk Cup in Saransk on December 30.

The event organiser is reported to have responded by saying that the photographs were from the 2012 edition of the event and not from 2014.

Canadian race walker Evan Dunfee is among those to have reacted to the claims and on his website he published a blog post about the allegations. In it he responds to the claims that the photographs are from 2012, with one of his points being that he says the shoes some of the athletes are wearing in the pictures only came out in 2014.

An IAAF spokesperson told AW: “The IAAF had already been informed by multiple sources of the alleged breach and our anti-doping department is investigating.”

They continued to highlight the section of the IAAF Rules which relates to violation of the prohibition of participation during ineligibility and states in part: “Where an Athlete or other Person who has been declared Ineligible violates the prohibition against participation during Ineligibility described in Rule 40.12(a), the results of such participation shall be Disqualified and a new period of Ineligibility equal in length up to the original period of Ineligibility shall be added to the end of the original period of Ineligibility.”

These latest allegations follow the news that Russia had been accused of systematic doping, corruption and cover-ups in a television documentary aired by German television channel ARD in December.

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