Sport's highest court yesterday extended doping bans until April 2011 for seven Russian athletes who tampered with urine samples.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) governing body's appeal for longer suspensions to ensure the women missed next month's world championships in Berlin.

The seven athletes, middle-distance runners Olga Yegorova, Tatyana Tomashova, Yelena Soboleva, Yulia Fomenko and Svetlana Cherkasova, plus field athletes Gulfiya Khanafeyeva and Darya Pishchalnikova, allegedly used other people's clean urine to pass doping tests.

'Fraudulent manipulation'

In its ruling yesterday, the court said the seven women appeared to have been involved in a "fraudulent manipulation" of their samples.

The IAAF provisionally suspended the women in July last year just days before the Beijing Olympics following an undercover investigation.

But Russia's athletics federation angered the global body by applying standard two-year bans backdated to start in spring 2007 when the samples were given.

The IAAF welcomed the court's ruling to apply bans of two years and nine months, running through April 20, 2011.