The McLaren report claims Russia’s sports ministry manipulated its athlete’s urine samples by collecting the real samples and replacing them with clean urine that had been frozen and stored in special banks.
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According to McLaren, Rodchenkov and all other witnesses interviewed were deemed credible and the personnel at the Moscow laboratory did not have a choice in whether to be involved in the state-directed system.
The International Olympic Committee (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 Games in Rio de Janeiro in August.
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.
Craig Reedie, WADA’s president, said: “Shamefully, the McLaren Report corroborates the allegations, exposing a modus operandi of serious manipulation of the doping control process in the satellite laboratory set up in Sochi for the 2014 Games; and, the Moscow laboratory since 2011 and after the Sochi Games”.
It read: “The findings of the McLaren Report are truly shocking”.
The Canadian professor emphasized that his report, which effectively confirms a widespread state-sponsored cover-up of steroid use by Russian athletes, presents the facts, but it is up to WADA to act on them.
In Moscow, student Vsevolod Zubov said: “It’s odd to single out Russian sportsmen for doping, because look at other countries – every other sportsman uses steroids, they fail doping tests, but no one there is banned – it’s all political”. The WADA report confirms these claims.
Vladimir Putin said the latest report on doping among Russian athletes lacked substance and was highly political.
IOC President Thomas Bach has said, “The IOC will not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organization implicated”. “In the meantime, we are focused on preparing Team USA to compete at the upcoming Rio Games and will rely on the IOC, WADA and the global federations to impose sanctions that are appropriate in relation to the magnitude of these offenses, and that give clean athletes some measure of comfort that they will be competing on a level playing field in Rio”.
McLaren stressed on Monday that “no recommendations” were tied to his report, saying his team had only been charged with investigating the allegations – which first came to light via former Russian anti-doping head Grigory Rodchnkov, who now resides in the US. “Blanket bans have never been and will never be just”.
Putin says the form of interference has changed but the goal is the same to make sport an instrument to apply geopolitical pressure in ways that led to boycotts of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the 1984 Los Angeles games over the Soviet Union’s entry into Afghanistan.
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Some worldwide anti-doping agencies have already demanded that Russian Federation be banned altogether from the Rio Olympics.
