Russia’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday gave the green light to legislation that would ban coaches and doctors found to be complicit in doping offenses in sports.
The State Duma approved in a third and final reading the bill, which envisages up to two-year disqualifications from sport for those involved.
If the athlete supplied with banned substances is a minor, the ban goes up to three years.
The bill now passes to the Kremlin for President Dmitry Medvedev to sign into law, considered a formality.
Such legislation has not been introduced for the offending athletes themselves due to international mechanisms that already exist such as the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Eager to clean up the country’s image ahead of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russian officials have taken a wealth of steps over the past few years to stamp out the use of performance-enhancing drugs among its athletes.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin urged tougher penalties on performance-enhancing drugs in 2009 following a series of Russian athlete disqualifications at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
