Wada urged Olympic and Paralympic organisers to consider a blanket ban on Russian athletes in time for Rio.
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They include banning Russian government officials from all worldwide sports events, maintaining the suspensions of the Moscow anti-doping laboratory and Russian anti-doping agency, and asking the global federations of the sports mentioned in McLaren’s report to consider following the IAAF lead by banning the respective Russian governing body.
That system ran from 2011 until August of 2015, a period of time that includes the London and Sochi Olympics, world championships in track and field and swimming hosted by Russian Federation, and the first eight months of the WADA independent commission investigation.
Richard McLaren, the investigator, looked into the allegations of a Russian whistleblower who said that he was involved in a government-run scheme to cheat at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, in 2014.
The International Olympic Committee will meet on Tuesday to discuss possible sanctions on the Russian Olympic team.
WADA had McLaren investigate allegations made by former Russian anti-doping laboratory director Grigory Rodchenkov in a May article in The New York Times.
But McLaren, whose report went public Monday, said Russia’s cheating also included the 2013 track world championships in Moscow and was in place during the 2015 swimming world championships in Kazan.
It revealed a system where every positive doping sample flagged up at the Moscow laboratory would be sent to the deputy sports minister, Yuri Nagornykh, to determine whether it should be hidden.
He said the 312 results that were held back represented only a “small slice” of the data that could have been examined.
Richard McLaren told a press conference in Canada on Monday that his team had uncovered clear evidence of systematic Russian doping, after a “very intense 57 days”.
The 2016 Rio Olympics are set to begin on August 5.
But he did say the officials directly named in the report would be provisionally suspended pending a Russian investigation into the report’s findings.
A scathing report outlining a state-sanctioned doping system in Russian Federation prompted immediate calls for the nation’s entire team to be sidelined from the Summer Games, raising the possibility that the Olympics could go on without a sports superpower for the first time since the 1980s.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has consistently denied doping by athletes coordinated by the state. Well, it was more like 8,000, McLaren now says.
It was already alleged that the Russian sports ministry, and state-funded anti-doping agency and lab were in on the scam.
“The IOC must respond decisively to the findings in the report – the future integrity of sport depends on it”, it said. He said it was up to others, including the International Olympic Committee, to “absorb and act upon” the report. But despite WADA’s recommendation, there is far from a consensus on what those sanctions will be, as the sports world toes the line between what Bach called “collective responsibility and individual justice”.
Among those not in favor of a full Russian ban were leaders in gymnastics – a sport that was not among the 28 with non-reported positives.
It would be an unprecedented move by the International Olympic Committee to extend that into a blanket ban but their language last night suggested it could happen.
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“So many more pressures come to bear when you’re this close to the Games”, said Sarah Konrad, chair of the U.S. Olympic committee’s athlete advisory council.
