Russia assailed in report for doping program beyond Sochi

Russian track and field athletes have already been banned from competing at the upcoming Games, and now the World Anti-Doping Agency’s executive board wants all Russian teams banned from the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

IOC President Thomas Bach called the revelations a “shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sports and on the Olympic Games” and said the IOC wouldn’t hesitate to apply the toughest sanctions available against those accused of cheating.

“Not only does the evidence implicate the Russian Ministry of Sport in running a doping system that’s sole aim was to subvert the doping control process, it also states that there was active participation and assistance of the Federal Security Service and the Centre of Sports Preparation of National Teams of Russia”.

McLaren, a Western University law professor, was asked by the World Anti-Doping Agency to investigate allegations of widespread doping by Russian athletes.

He went on to describe two separate systems designed not to register a positive doping test, one for “normal” operations out of the Russian national anti-doping laboratories in Moscow, and another able to hoodwink the global officials also present for doping tests during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

WADA, which hired arbitrator Richard McLaren to lead the investigation, called on the International Olympic Committee to decline entries of all Russian athletes to this summer’s Olympics.

The report also follows on charges made by Grigory Rodchenkov, a laboratory director in Sochi.

The system was used from late 2011 through August 2015.

The Russian weightlifting team is also facing the prospect of a ban from Rio after repeated anti-doping violations.

Fifty-four percent of positive urine samples from Russian athletes were replaced by false positives, with the Minister of Sport deciding who would be protected, McLaren found. Ahead of the report, 10 national anti-doping bodies, including those of the U.S., Germany and Japan, had called for Russian Federation to be barred if the report was damning.

Mclaren said the findings were established beyond a reasonable doubt and he is unwaveringly confident in their report.

McLaren did not make any recommendations on sanctions.

Sprint kayaker Adam van Koeverden says the results of an independent investigation into doping in Russian athletics are hugely disappointing, but something the sporting community had long suspected.

[2.] The Investigation determined that a high number of Olympic sports, non-Olympic sports and Paralympic sports benefited from the system orchestrated by the Russian Ministry of Sport.

The report confirming widespread cheating offers some details.

Russian president Vladimir Putin says that the Olympics could be on the “brink of a split” following allegations of Russia’s “state-sponsored doping”. That program involved dark-of-night switching of dirty samples with clean ones; it prevented Russian athletes, including more than a dozen medal winners, from testing positive.

It also confirmed some of the most extraordinary claims made by Rodchenkov, including one claim that the F.S.B. had succeeded in opening the supposedly tamper-proof urine sample bottles at the Sochi Olympics.

McLaren’s report deemed Rodchenkov and the other witnesses interviewed as credible.

Olympic leaders had said those moves undermined the report, and called it “disappointing” that the groups would try and have Russian Federation banned in such an “underhanded” way.

“I’m shocked and devastated by what’s been going on”, Melia said.