MOSCOW -- Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko wants all retested doping samples from the 2008 and 2012 Olympics to be thrown out because of alleged flaws in the reanalysis process.
"A laboratory which falsely declared a positive test result must be stripped of its accreditation, and all the samples it tested must be declared invalid," Mutko told Russia's Tass news agency on Wednesday.
The International Olympics Committee has reported 55 positive findings in retesting of stored samples from the 2008 Beijing Games and 2012 London Olympics. The Russian Olympic Committee has said 22 of the cases involved Russian athletes, including medalists.
Russian officials said two of the athletes were cleared when their "B" samples tested negative, contradicting the positive "A" samples.
Mutko said those two cases were enough justification for the entire retesting program to be scrapped.
Russian state sports channel Match TV previously reported that 10 Russian medalists had tested positive in retests from Beijing. One of those athletes, bronze medal-winning race walker Denis Nizhegorodov, was later reported as having a negative "B" sample, along with rower Alexander Kornilov.
The IOC has been retesting samples at the World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited laboratory in Lausanne, Switzerland. The tests are targeted on athletes hoping to compete at the upcoming Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.