Criminal cases opened into Russia's Vancouver failure

Criminal cases on 12 charges have been opened in connection with Russia’s poor performance at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Audit Chamber chief Sergei Stepashin gave no further details when he broke the news to reporters on Thursday, but said that most issues concerned the athletes’ training system, the so-called uniform calendar plan and billions of rubles in losses incurred by a sports lottery.

Despite 6 billion rubles allocated for the Olympic training, Russia finished 11th in the unofficial team standings with 15 medals and only three golds, its poorest record ever.