In a considerable coup for the anti-doping police, an intricate sting operation involving DNA testing and nearly two years of observation was completed yesterday, resulting in a number of leading Russian female athletes being suspended from their sport and so being prevented from competing in the Beijing Olympics.

The possibility that urine samples in Russia were being systematically manipulated alerted the the anti-doping arm of the IAAF, the world governing body for athletics, nearly two years ago. Yesterday, suspensions were issued to seven female athletes, a battalion of world champions among them, including Yelena Soboleva, who set a world indoor record in the 1,500 metres at the World Indoor Championships in Valencia this year, Tatyana Tomashova, the two-times 1,500 metres world champion, and Darya Pishchalnikova, the former European discus champion.

Another significant name to have been shamed yesterday was Olga Yegorova, whose ban brings some vindication for Paula Radcliffe. In 2001, Yegorova escaped on a technicality, having tested positive for EPO and then, at the World Championships in Edmonton, Canada, with Radcliffe waving a banner from the stands that read “EPO cheats out”, she proceeded to win gold in the 5,000 metres.

The embarrassment of that occasion struck deep, although the IAAF has gone to extreme lengths to nail the Russian athletes this time and this success yesterday suggests that it may be breathing closer down the necks of the cheats than many had believed. However, when seven Russians from a variety of different coaches and disciplines are caught using the same trick to beat the system, it simultaneously raises fears that doping in the country may be returning to the widespread systematic regime of the former Soviet Union. The way the Russians were beating the system was to substitute clean urine for their own when asked for samples. Exactly how this was done is as yet unknown, although the insertion into the body of catheters containing clean urine is not a new practice among cheats.

What raised the interest of the IAAF anti-doping officers, it seems, was not that the Russians were doing anything wrong but that they appeared to be doing everything so meticulously right. In out of competition tests, the general ratio among professional sportspeople is one missed test for every five that an athlete completes. It was when the Russians, over a long period, started missing significantly fewer than that figure that their apparent good behaviour backfired.

In a statement yesterday, the IAAF explained that it began deliberately storing the urine of certain Russians, whose samples had been taken by testers on their home turf. The sting was finally executed in Valencia at the World Indoor Championships in March where Soboleva took gold. At these championships, however, the IAAF was able to conduct their own testing and thus match up the different urine samples.

It is extremely rare that laboratory testers go as far as conducting DNA testing. However, when the IAAF performed tests on the two sets of samples, it became clear that the clean urine provided to testers in Russia did not even belong to the seven athletes.

It is believed that, to complete its body of evidence, the IAAF went to Moscow in the last month to collect yet more samples from the athletes involved. These samples then gave further proof that a system had been used to break the IAAF's rules 32.2 (b) and 32.2 (e) that deal with “fraudulent substitution of urine”.

Yet again, cheats beating the system may be the underlying truth here; yesterday, however, the tables were turned and it was the system that won.