BRATISLAVA, May 14. /TASS/: Players of all national teams participating in the 2019 IIHF (International Ice Hockey Federation) World Championship underwent tests for banned performance enhancing drugs and all doping samples tested negative, the IIHF press service announced to TASS.
"All teams before the IIHF World Championship in Slovakia were checked by doping-control officers and all doping tests were negative," the press service reported.
The 2019 IIHF World Championship is hosted by Slovakia between May 10 and 26. The participating teams were divided into Groups A and B. Group A is playing matches in Slovakia’s Kosice and includes hosts Slovakia, Canada, the United States, Finland, Germany, Denmark, France and Great Britain.
Group B is playing matches in Bratislava and enlists teams from Sweden, Russia, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Norway, Latvia, Austria and Italy.
Russia currently tops its Group B with nine points and is scheduled to play the next match on May 15 against Italy.
Slovakia offers two venues for hosting matches of the championship and they are the country’s capital of Bratislava and the country’s second largest city of Kosice. Each city hosts 28 matches of the group stage as well as two quarterfinals.
The semifinals, the final and the match for the bronze will be played in Bratislava at the over 10,000-seat capacity Ondrej Nepela Arena. Kosice, which has a population of 240,000, offers the over 8,300-seat capacity Steel Arena.
