Russian Federation operated a state-sponsored doping programme for four years across the “vast majority” of summer and winter Olympic sports, claims a new report.
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A report by an Independent Commission of the World Anti-Doping Agency could lead to all Russian athletes being banned from the 2016 summer Olympics in Rio.
U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun said in a statement that the report “confirms what we have stated previously: the current anti-doping system is broken and urgently requires the attention of everyone interested in protecting clean athletes”.
When asked if no ban imposed could mark the beginning of the end of the International Olympic Committee, former skeleton competitor Pengilly replied, “it certainly has that potential”.
The president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach has pledged to enforce the “toughest sanctions available”. It included the 2013 World Athletics Championships in Moscow and 2013 World University Games in Kazan.
“Given that there was an bad lot of the corruption going on in the system in Russian Federation, they should have picked it up much earlier and it should’ve been WADA who did this and not investigative journalists”, Mr Mazanov said.
However, in the light of Monday’s report, with a wide group of sports bodies now calling for a blanket ban, a broad sanction could now be on the cards.
“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 worldwide 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”, Blackmun said.
The IOC will decide on Tuesday about any “provisional measures and sanctions” for the Rio Olympics, which start on 5 August. That program involved dark-of-night switching of dirty samples with clean ones; it prevented Russian athletes, including more than a dozen medal winners, from testing positive.
An investigation commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) says Russia’s sports ministry “directed, controlled and oversaw” manipulation of urine samples provided by its athletes.
WADA president Craig Reedie said Russian Federation must sack government officials implicated in the wide-ranging doping scheme.
“Now we are witnessing a unsafe relapse of politics’ interference into sports”.
It says Russian athletes benefited from what the report called the “Disappearing Positive Methodology”, whereby positive doping samples would go missing. It did not say which officials would be affected.
However, Mutko and his deputy Yury Nagornykh were among those named in the report.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of USADA, called the report proof of a “mind-blowing level of corruption” and urged the global community to come together to ensure that what he called an unprecedented level of criminality never threatens sports again.
WADA mandated McLaren to investigate allegations made by former Moscow anti-doping laboratory director Grigory Rodchenkov in May – he is now in hiding in the United States and wanted by Russian authorities.
The Kremlin has denied the existence of a doping program. McLaren said he is confident the document was not leaked and stands by its credibility.
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A prior US-Canadian letter pushing for a total ban on Russian competitors at Rio was based on “rampant speculation” about the findings, he said.
