Ilnur Zakarin's victory at Finhaut-Emosson on stage 17 of the Tour de France posed something of a logistical problem for the race organisation. With no interpreter on hand to translate Zakarin's remarks in the winner's press conference from his native Russian into English and French, Katusha team manager Viacheslav Ekimov was drafted in to perform the task.
With Zakarin's solo win coming just two days after the publication of the McLaren report, which has led WADA to call for Russia's exclusion from the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, it was inevitable that he would be asked about allegations of a state cover-up of doping cases, including some from the nation's cyclists.
The question saw an extended deliberation between Zakarin and Ekimov, as the manager provided a translation – and perhaps some advice – to his rider. Zakarin, who is set to compete at the Rio 2016 Olympics for Russia, served a two-year doping ban after testing positive for the anabolic steroid methandienone as a teenager in 2009.
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"I am participating at the Tour de France, so it's already quite stressful and all of my thoughts are on this race. I'm not following the news. After the stages, I'm reading books and watching movies, trying to be away from stress," Zakarin said, before Ekimov added a comment in his capacity as manager.
"Ok, we are talking about a scandal, about the samples from the sport of cycling but currently nobody knows if those samples are from the track, mountain biking, from women's cycling or from men's cycling, so we can't really comment on that," Ekimov said, going on to offer his tally of the out-of-competition doping tests carried out on Zakarin this season.
"Ilnur is the most tested athlete on Team Katusha. Since last November he has had 12 out-of-competition tests and all of the results were tested by European labs, in particular in Lausanne, Paris and Barcelona. Katusha has its own internal testing too, and Ilnur has also been tested at least once in every race he has participated in this year – every single race."
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