Soviet hockey players and laboratory workers conspired to deceive drug testers at the 1986 World Championships in Moscow by hiding urine specimens behind toilets, former Soviet star Igor Larionov claims in a new book.
Larionov, who now plays for the NHL's Vancouver Canucks, also charges that Soviet national team coach Viktor Tikhonov ordered some players to receive injections even though they did not know the contents of the shots.Larionov, a long-time critic of Tikhonov and the way Soviet hockey is run, makes his claims in a book, "The Front Line Rebels," which has been published in Finnish.
Excerpts of the book were printed this week in the Helsinki newspaper Uusi Suomi, a respected daily that is the second-largest in Finland.
"When Soviet players went to the doping control points they used to take a container of prepared urine from behind the toilet bowl, which had been placed there," Larionov said in the book.
Soviet laboratory personnel were involved in the scheme and would follow players into the toilets, the book says.
The Soviets, who have dominated world hockey for the past three decades, has been accused in the past of drug use. But no proof of doping has been found.
The most powerful figure in Soviet hockey for the past decade has been Tikhonov, who was accused by Larionov last year of being an authoritarian.
A letter by Larionov also claimed Tikhonov often prevented players from seeing their wives and families during training, which lasted for most of the year. The letter led to a rift between Tikhonov and Larionov, who was backed by some teammates.
In the book, Larionov claims players were given injections at Tikhonov's command but were not told what was in the shots.
"I well remember the threats of the ice hockey monarch: `Those who refuse shots will be reported to the sports commission and decisions will be made . . . right up to disqualification from the national team,' " Uusi Suomi quoted Larionov as saying in the book. "Those were his own words.
"We were not the ones who cheated. The cheating was done on our behalf by others," Larionov said in the book. "There was never any mention of what was in the syringes. That was the doctor's business."
Larionov claims in the book that the top five players on the Soviet national team - himself, Vladimir Krutov, Sergei Makarov, Viacheslav Fetisov and Alexei Kasatonov - refused the injections because they did not want to "rise to new levels in the game in that way."
Krutov now is a teammate of Larionov in Vancouver, while Makarov plays for the Calgary Flames and Fetisov is a defenseman for the New Jersey Devils. Kasatonov was drafted by New Jersey in 1983 and is rumored to be close to joining the Devils.