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maltatoday WEDNESDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2017 Sport 23 OLYMPICS Answers to the MaltaToday crossword will be published next Wednesday WEATHER: Partly to rather cloudy becoming mostly cloudy VISIBILITY: Good WIND: West Southwest force 4 to 5 becoming Southwest force 5 to 6, locally force 6 to 7 at times SEA: Moderate becoming rough Swell: Negligible becoming low Westerly A B C D E F G H 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 White to play and mate in four moves A B C D E F G H 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Last week's solution Sudoku rules are extremely easy: Fill all empty squares so that the numbers 1 to 9 appear once in each row, column and 9x9 box. MAINLY SUNNY 18 º C /13 º C UV INDEX: 3 Today's Weather Chess Sudoku Pursuits Across 1. Blood clots in the veins (10) 8. Motion picture (5) 9. Newly married woman (5) 10. Microbe (4) 12. Stinging plant (6) 14. Delicate in meaning (6) 17. Reflected sound (4) 21. Highways (5) 22. Move slowly (5) 23. Water line (5,5) Down 2. Hang suspended in the air (5) 3. Baking chamber (4) 4. Christian writings (5) 5. Quick (5) 6. Surrey village (5) 7. Complacent (4) 11. Encountered (3) 13. Golfers mound (3) 14. Dry stalks (5) 15. Animal (5) 16. Intense light beam (5) 18. Long for (5) 19. Lubricates (4) 20. Land measure (4) Qxb8+ Kg7 (or Kh7) Qxh8# Russia toppled from Sochi 2014 medals first place but final count unknown RUSSIA have been knocked off the medals top spot for the 2014 Sochi winter Olym- pics after five more athletes received life- time Games bans on Monday over doping violations at those Olympics, but the final medal count could be months or even years away. This month a total of 19 Russians have been banned from the Games for life as a result of an International Olympic Com- mittee (IOC) investigation into allega- tions of widespread doping among Rus- sian competitors and sample tampering by laboratory and security officials at the Sochi Games. Gold medal-winning bobsledders Dmi- trii Trunenkov and Aleksei Negodailo, members of the winning four-man team, as well as biathlon relay silver medallists Yana Romanova and Olga Vilukhina, who also won silver in the 7.5 km event, were the latest to be sanctioned by the IOC on Monday. Russia, a winter sports powerhouse, were top of the medals table at the end of the Games on home soil in 2014 but the latest IOC decision now brings their number of gold medals at events down to eight. Those already banned include double gold medallist bobsledder Alexander Zubkov, Olympic skeleton champion Al- exander Tretyakov as well as six cross- country skiers. While the IOC has ordered the return of the medals, Russian sports officials have pledged to appeal the bans and take their case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). It is unlikely that Russians will get any medals back with the IOC saying on Monday that the doping sam- ples had been clearly tampered with, in its published reasoning on the first athlete to have been banned in this process. But they can be hopeful of potentially overturning the lifetime Olympic bans, with the CAS having thrown out previous attempts to ban past drugs cheats from future Olympics. The IOC and the British Olympic As- sociation had tried to pass such Olympic bans ahead of the 2012 London Games but both efforts were thwarted by the CAS. It will no doubt further delay the pro- cess and can ultimately lead to medals being reallocated years later as is often the case. The IOC said that with each case being different and involving several interna- tional sports federations as well as ap- peals, giving a specific date by when all Sochi Games medals will have been de- cided was not possible at this stage. Australian race walker Jared Tallent re- ceived his London 2012 Olympics 50-km gold medal in 2016 after Russian winner Sergey Kirdyapkin was stripped of his medal for doping. But it could also be the case that the IOC decides not to reallocate some med- als, as they did with disgraced US sprinter Mario Jones's 100m gold medal from the 2000 Sydney Olympics. In 2007 the IOC stripped all five of Jones' Sydney Games track and field medals but refused to reallocate her 100m sprint gold to silver medallist Katerina Thanou of Greece, who was herself disqualified for doping offences at the 2004 Games. Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) laughs with Russia's gold medallist bobsleigh athlete Alexander Zubkov during the closing ceremony at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics