WADA commissioned Richard McLaren, a Canadian lawyer, to produce the report after Grigory Rodchenkov, the former director of Russia’s anti-doping laboratory, acted as a whistle-blower and told the Times about the extensive nature of Russia’s cheating during the Sochi Games in 2014.
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The report comes after reports Sunday revealed that the head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, Travis Tygart, had called on the International Olympics Committee (IOC) to ban the entire Russian team from the upcoming Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
“What emerged from all the investigative sources was a simple but effective and efficient method for direction and control under the Deputy Minister of Sport to force the Laboratory to report any positive screen finding as a negative analytical result”.
A World Anti-Doping Agency report unveiled by Canadian attorney Richard McLaren found that Russian secret service and sport leaders switched sample contents and made some doping samples disappear, to allow Russian dope cheats to compete at Sochi.
WADA announced in May that it would investigate doping allegations levelled at unnamed Russian athletes in relation to the 2014 Sochi Games.
WADA made seven recommendations after the report was published, including one that Russian government officials be denied access to global competitions, including Rio 2016.
The report is an embarrassment for President Vladimir Putin, who personally oversaw preparations for the $50 billion games in Sochi, the most expensive in Olympic history.
“The Moscow laboratory operated, for the protection of doped Russian athletes, within a state-dictated fail-safe system”, McLaren said.
Now, the World Anti-Doping Agency wants the International Olympic Committee to ban all Russian teams from the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
The IOC did not spell out whether it would heed growing calls for Olympic bans already imposed on Russia’s track and field athletes and weightlifters to be extended to all its competitors in Rio.
In a statmeent, the International Olympic Committee said: “The IOC will now carefully study the complex and detailed allegations in particular with regard to the Russian ministry of sport”. But individual athletes can compete as neutrals, if they prove they are clean.
“Russia’s Olympic Committee was extremely disappointed with the moves by the Anti-Doping Agencies of the United States and Canada”, Zhukov wrote in his letter, which was released by the Russian committee’s press service on Monday.
“The letter outlines a basis for suspension of the Russian NOC [National Olympic Committee] from Rio, in light of the evidence and information that will come as a result of this report, and aligns very much with the position we have taken so far in this [long] process”, Scott wrote in an email dated July 16.
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Russia’s Olympic chief on Monday attacked the United States and Canada’s anti-doping agencies for trying to pressure the International Olympic Committee into imposing a full ban on Russian Federation from the Rio Olympics.
