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IOC to explore options for banning entire Russian team from Rio

The BBC reports that the International Olympic Committee’s executive board are to discuss the results of the report by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren in a teleconference.

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There was no immediate comment from the U.S. State Department.

Russian Federation must wait to learn if it can send a team to next month’s Olympics after calls for it to be barred from the Rio Games for operating a four-year, state-sponsored doping programme.

McLaren said Russia’s sport ministry “directed, controlled and oversaw”, the scheme, which he termed “state-dictated failsafe system” created to let the country’s competitors cheat.

WADA led calls in support of Russia’s ban, a position backed by the German Olympic body (DOSB) as well as anti-doping institutions from Canada to New Zealand.

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.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will today discuss whether to ban Russian Federation from the Rio Olympics, which start on August 5. “Blanket bans have never been and will never be just”.

“This includes plans for the European Games 2019 organised by the European Olympic Committees (EOC)”.

That means, rather than applying a total ban, federations could suspend individual Russian sports. Nagornykh has also been suspended. A deputy sports minister has been suspended.

Dmitry Peskov says that was because Mutko was not named as someone “directly involved” in the cover-up.

While it found no smoking gun directly linking Mutko to the broader programme to protect drug cheats it said Mutko took the decision to cover up the doping case of a foreign player in the Russian football league.

The High Court judgment mandates Shobukhova to repay 377,961.62 pounds ($498,000) plus costs relating to her 2010 marathon victory and second-place finish the following year in the British capital.

London Marathon chief executive Nick Bitel says “the next step is to get the judgment enforced in Russian Federation. It will be a long and hard process but we will pursue it as we are determined that cheats should not benefit”, Nick Bitel, Chief Executive of London Marathon Events, said.

The IAAF appealed for a four-year ban from the Court of Arbitration for Sport. A settlement was reached in June for Shobukhova to serve a three-year, two-month ban through March 2016.

The umbrella body for summer Olympic sports has indicated it is opposed to a ban for the whole Russian team.

A hearing is underway to determine whether Russia’s entire athletics team will be banned from the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro over doping.

The commission also concluded that the system of concealing positive doping tests at the Moscow anti-doping laboratory had been in effect from late 2011 to August 2015.

A damning report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) detailed an elaborate cheating scheme run by the sports ministry that affected 30 sports with help from the FSB state intelligence agency.

“The EB has today started disciplinary actions related to the involvement of officials within the Russian Ministry of Sports and other persons mentioned in the report because of violations of the Olympic Charter and the World Anti-Doping Code”, the IOC statement read.

Calls for a blanket ban on Russian Federation – from both the Olympics and Paralympics – followed the publication of the McLaren report on Monday. It’s a decision filled with political ramifications that involve a key Olympic country.

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With less than a month remaining until the Games in Rio de Janeiro, the International Olympic Committee is taking a two-pronged approach. “Therefore, the IOC will not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organisation implicated”, IOC President Thomas Bach said.

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