MOSCOW: The poisoned legacy of being Russia’s Sports Minister has been handed on yet again with Oleg Matytsin, 55, the latest appointee by new Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.

Matytsin replaces Pavel Kolobkov, who resigned last week along with the rest of the government after President Vladimir Putin’s high-level clear-out.

He takes up the brief at a delicate time with Russian sport facing the threat of a four-year ban from world sports events in the ongoing doping scandal saga.

Matytsin played table tennis for the former Soviet Union at the Olympic Games in Seoul in 1988 then moved into sports administration and has been chair of FISU, the international university sports federation, since November 2015.

That role saw him appointed to the education commission of the International Olympic Committee.

According to the Novosti news agency , Matytsin intends to retain his FISU role.

In other changes Dmitry Chernyshenko, who headed the organising committee for the Sochi 2014 Winter Games, has entered government as one of the nine Deputy Prime Ministers, overseeing sport. He currently chairs the media branch of the Gazprom group.

Out altogether is Vitaly Mutko, Minister of Sport between 2008 and 2016. He has lost his post as Deputy Prime Minister after having prevously lost the leaderships of the 2018 World Cup organising committee and the Russian football federation.

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