Drug Free Sport New Zealand said damning findings in a report released Monday that the Russian secret service helped athletes cover-up doping during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi represented a “massive betrayal”.
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Richard McLaren produced the report that uncovered a lab in Moscow that protected doped athletes and a Sochi laboratory used to swap sample tests so athletes who tested positive could still compete in the 2014 Olympic games.
The report found: “The Ministry of Sport directed, controlled and oversaw the manipulation of athletes’ analytical results or sample swapping and the active participation and assistance of the FSB [Russian Federal Security Service], CSP [Centre of Sports Preparation for Russian athletes] and both Moscow and Sochi laboratories”.
An investigation by the global agency that polices drug cheating in sports has found “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the Russian government ran a widespread doping regime for years in multiple Olympic sports, calling into question whether any Russian athletes should be permitted to compete at the Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro next month.
McLaren’s report said it did, and the investigator said he was “unwaveringly confident in my report”.
In the report is documentation that 11 positive samples from Russian soccer players disappeared under the state paid doping scheme.
The US Anti-Doping Agency condemned the “mind-blowing level of corruption” unearthed by the report, which was commissioned following claims made by a Russian whistleblower.
WADA mandated McLaren to investigate allegations made by former Moscow anti-doping laboratory director Grigory Rodchenkov in May. “I would fully endorse a full Russian team ban”.
He claimed that up to 15 Russian medal winners at the Sochi Winter Games were part of a programme in which tainted urine samples were switched for clean ones.
Bach had been walking a tightrope in recent weeks, seeking not to pre-judge any investigations – or court appeals – and not to commit to whether key competitors Russian Federation would be at the Olympics in Brazil.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) executive board will hold an emergency telephone conference today to decide provisional sanctions, over what IOC president Thomas Bach called “a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sports and on the Olympic Games”.
The report states that the cheating began from 2011 – following Team Russia’s performance at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics – all the way through to the world swimming championships.
One of the letters’ co-signers was Paul Melia, who heads Canada’s anti-doping organization and was in Toronto for McLaren’s presentation.
“Yes, the forms of such interference have changed, but the aim is the same as before: to make sport an instrument of geopolitical pressure, to form a negative image of countries and peoples”.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a statement Monday that the investigation reflected “a risky recurrence of politics interfering in sport”.
