– The Ministry of Sport made the determination as to which athletes would be protected.
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“In the face of such evidence of state-sponsored subversion of anti-doping processes, Wada insists upon imposition of the most serious consequences to protect clean athletes from the scourge of doping in sport”, said Wada president Craig Reedie, who is also an International Olympic Committee member.
Among the other recommendations, WADA said global federations from sports implicated in the report consider action against Russian national bodies and that McLaren and his team complete their mandate provided WADA can secure funding.
McLaren found that Russia’s secret service and top sports ministry officials – as well as those responsible for preparing Russian athletes – made some positive samples vanish and switched clean samples for doping-tainted ones at other times during the Winter Games in Russia.
A previous Mutko interview – conducted last September in Zurich for an earlier WADA report of doping cover-ups and corruption in Russian track and field – was “singularly unhelpful”, McLaren said Monday.
The statement said the International Olympic Committee executive board would hold a conference call to discuss immediate sanctions surrounding the Rio Olympics.
The state-sponsored cheating happened after an “abysmal” medal count at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010, according to the report.
Several national anti-doping organizations, including from Canada and the United States, were awaiting McLaren’s findings to see if they would push for a total ban of the Russian team.
He was relying on the IOC and worldwide sports federations to figure out appropriate sanctions. 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 Mr Bach called “collective responsibility and individual justice”.
Federation Internationale de Football Association made no mention of Mutko in its own statement about the McLaren report and said it will ask WADA to share information about alleged cover-ups of doping in Russian soccer.
Richard McLaren released a detailed report into allegations of doping among Russian Olympic athletes on Monday, pushing the World Anti-Doping Agency’s executive board to call on the International Olympic Committee to ban all Russian teams.
“The right to participate at the games can not be stolen from an athlete, who has duly qualified and has not been found guilty of doping”, said Bruno Grandi, president of gymnastics’ worldwide federation.
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Thomas Bach, the IOC president, called WADA’s report “a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sports and on the Olympic Games” and said the IOC executive board will meet via conference call Tuesday “to make initial decisions on possible sanctions for the Rio Games”.
