The 24-year-old tested positive for the banned substance methylhexaneamine prior to Latvia's quarter-final defeat to Canada in Sochi on February 19 and was thrown out of the Games by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

The forward, who plays for Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) outfit Dinamo Riga, will be suspended until October 30, 2015, but avoided a two-year ban, which is required by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), because he "acted negligently but without significant negligence in failing to verify the safety of the supplements he was taking", according to a statement released today by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF).

"Pavlovs should have taken into account that preparations of the kind he had taken can never be trusted and considered safe, even if the same preparation had not been tested positive at an earlier test," the statement continued.

"The player had to be aware of that possibility."

The player claimed he had been taking a Latvian food supplement recommended by his club doctor all season, without knowing specifically what it contained.

Pavlovs is one of two Latvian ice hockey players to have failed drugs tests at Sochi 2014 ©Getty Images



Last Friday (April 25), the IOC revealed that Ralfs Freibergs was the second Latvian ice hockey player to fail a drugs test at Sochi 2014 after he gave a positive test for an anabolic androgenic steroid on February 22, having giving a urine sample following the quarter-final defeat to Canada two days earlier.

The 23-year-old has been provisionally suspended by the IIHF, pending further investigation, ruling him out of the World Championships in Minsk, Belarus, which run from May 9 to 25.

The IOC has disqualified Freibergs from the men's quarter-finals and he is considered as excluded from Sochi 2014, while he is also expected to return his eighth place diploma.

Latvia's eighth-place finish was their best ever at an Olympic Games and despite two of their players having now failed drugs tests, the Latvian men's team ice hockey team will not be disqualified from the Games.

That is because more than two members of a team need to produce a positive test for their team's result to face being annulled.

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