MOSCOW -- The Russian Olympic Committee on Monday blasted a decision by the International Olympic Committee to strip cross-country skier Larissa Lazutina of all her medals from the 2002 Salt Lake City Games because of positive drug tests.

"If we start to revise former achievements, then the Olympic past will be more and more unpredictable,'' said Gennady Shvets, spokesman for the Russian Olympic Committee.

On Sunday, the IOC executive board took away two silver medals and wiped out a fourth-place finish after Lazutina lost a series of appeals against her doping suspension.

Shvets expressed discontent with Russian lawyers who pushed forward with the appeals that the country's Olympic Committee had decided were futile, saying the attorneys were ``more engaged in a personal public relations campaign than defending the interests of their clients.''

Lazutina, one of the most decorated athletes in Winter Olympics history, had already been stripped of her gold medal in the 30-kilometer classical race after testing positive for the banned endurance-enhancer darbepoetin.

She had not been disqualified from other events because she had passed drug tests after those races.

After the Olympics, it emerged that Lazutina had also tested positive for darbepoetin months earlier. The international ski federation ruled she should have been ineligible to compete in Salt Lake City and banned her for two years.

All the Russians appeals were turned down. Last week, Switzerland's highest court upheld the sanctions, clearing the way for the IOC to strip Lazutina's other medals.