Less than a month before the start of the Olympic Games in Rio, WADA have recommended that the International Olympic Committee [IOC] and International Paralympic Committee consider banning all athletes entered by the Russian Olympic Committee.
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In a leaked letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) the officials from the U.S. and Canadian anti-doping agencies call for a complete ban on Russians if the Sochi report compiled by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren is damning.
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.
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.
The investigation, chaired Richard McLaren, says that the Russian sports ministry “directed, controlled and oversaw” manipulation and tampering of urine samples provided by athletes.
Vladimir Putin said the latest report on doping among Russian athletes lacked substance and was highly political. He claimed that 15 Russian medal winners were part of a program that switched tainted samples with clean ones.
Time is crucial because the Olympics begin August 5, and decisions about Russia’s participation in Rio must be made.
McLaren also confirmed that his team had been in communication with the U.S. Department of Justice, which also was investigating allegations of Russian doping since May of this year.
International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach called the Russian practices a “shocking and unprecedented attack” on sport, saying that the IOC would not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organization implicated.
Russia’s deputy minister of sports would direct lab workers which positive samples to send through and which to hold back.
“A mind-blowing level of corruption within both Russian sport and government, ‘” said Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.
When the track and field team was barred, the New York Times described the punishment as “without precedent in Olympics history”.
“I don’t think it has any impact whatsoever on the report and I pay no attention to it”, McLaren said. How the authorities opened the sample bottles is unknown, though McLaren’s investigation found a way to remove caps from the bottles “without any evidence visible to the untrained eye”.
The International Olympic Committee has been advised to ban all Russian athletes from the 2016 Rio Olympics.
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” McLaren also insisted that he was “supremely confident” in the findings of the inquiry event though “we’ve had a very intense 57 days”.
