The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) today upheld a lifetime ban levied against Sergei Portugalov, former chief of the Russian Athletics Federation's Medical Commission for his role in providing illicit substances to Russian athletes. <br/><br/>The Lausanne-based court said in a statement that it had slapped Portugalov with a lifetime period of ineligibility beginning March 10, 2017, for having supplied athletes with banned substances. <br/><br/>The CAS said that Portugalov had been found to have violated several articles of the IAAF anti-doping regulations, including the possession, trafficking and administration of prohibited substances. <br/><br/>In its 2015 report, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) wrote that Portugalov supplied performance enhancing drugs to athletes and coaches, administered doping programmes and "even injected athletes himself".