Yuliya Stepanova
Russian distance runner
Yuliya Igorevna Stepanova (née Rusanova; Russian: Ю́лия И́горевна Степанова (Русанова); born 3 July 1986) is a Russian runner who specializes in the 800 metres track event. Stepanova was also an informant for World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) about Russia's large-scale doping program. She and her husband, Vitaly Stepanov, exposed widespread doping in Russia.
Career
Stepanova, then known as Yuliya Rusanova, started having testosterone injections at the suggestion of her coach, Vladimir Mokhnev, and later took anabolic steroids. Stepanova's athletic results began to improve rapidly and she was offered a place on the Russian national team. In 2011 she won 3rd place in the 800 m race at the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Paris and 2nd place in the 800 m race at the Russian Championships in Cheboksary the same year. All her results since March 2011 was stripped, because of abnormalities in her biological passport, which were found in 2013. She was banned for two years.
She said in a 2016 interview, "I knew it was banned but I think my coach prepared me well because he was telling me stories about how it's normal, that's what all athletes do." On 26 February 2013, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) announced that Rusanova had been banned for two years following abnormalities in her biological passport. All of her results from 3 March 2011 were forfeited.
“Yuliya Stepanova” enters the record as russian distance runner. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Yuliya, Stepanova and Russian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q457938. VIAF identifies the subject as 1463160122838140630003. The Library of Congress control number is nb2021013318. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1986, 2011, 2013 and 2016.
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This entry incorporates text from “Yuliya Stepanova” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.