Thomas Bach said earlier in the day that a number of athletes could be banned from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil after their doping samples, collected at the 2008 Olympics in China, had been retested, reports Tass.
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The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has made a decision to re-examine samples from the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and the London games in 2012 “using the most recent scientific methods”, Bach said in an opinion piece in French daily Le Monde.
Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko told the state news agency Tass that Russia was prepared to appoint a foreigner to head its anti-doping agency.
The International Olympic Committee announced Tuesday that 31 athletes could be barred from the upcoming Rio de Janeiro Games after their samples from Beijing came back positive in retests.
The unnamed athletes from 12 countries and 6 sports will be, “banned from competing at the Olympic Games Rio 2016”, reads an I.O.C. statement. All those athletes infringing antidoping rules would be banned from competing at the Rio Olympics, it said.
The British Olympic Association was unaware of any Team GB athletes being among those caught cheating after the re-examination of anti-doping samples from the 2008 Beijing Games.
The IOC will also undertake a wider re-testing program of medalists from Beijing and London.
The Olympic body stores samples for 10 years to allow for retesting with improved techniques, with athletes caught facing retroactive disqualification and loss of any medals.
FILE- In this Monday, Aug. 3, 2015 file photo, IOC President Thomas Bach speaks at a press conferenc …
Bach said Russian athletes would also possibly need to prove they were clean to compete in Rio.
Anti-doping confidentiality protocols are such that Coates, even as president of the AOC, would not necessarily know if Australian athletes faced bans from these retrospective tests.
The allegations against the Sochi laboratory are “very detailed and therefore very worrying”, Bach said in Le Monde.
It’s not the first time samples from Beijing have been retested.
“The whole cause of clean sport and protecting clean athletes is what WADA is all about so when people cheat and above all if it is institutionalized in any way, whether it’s a sport or whether it’s a country, then it is extremely irritating but there’s no point in just being irritated”.
Meeting Tuesday, the EB of the International Olympic Committee has requested WADA to initiate a fully fledged investigation into allegations that testing at the Sochi Laboratory was subverted.
Q: What about samples from the 2012 London Olympics?
A spokesperson from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of NY would not confirm the probe to NPR, citing DOJ policy to not comment on investigations, but the Times, citing “two people familiar with the case”, said “prosecutors are believed to be pursuing conspiracy and fraud charges”.
Olympic boss John Coates is set to formally address the matter widely expected to further tarnish the reputation of Russian sport and sideline athletes preparing to compete at this year’s August Rio games at an AOC event on Wednesday night.
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach has refused to speculate on Russia’s chances of being thrown out of the Rio Olympics completely.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that USA federal authorities were investigating allegations of state-led doping by top Russian athletes, on grounds of fraud and conspiracy. It’s unclear what they might find, however, as Rodchenkov said he substituted tainted samples for clean ones.
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The IOC will continue to work to shed full light to the issue.
