A system of state sponsored doping was “beautiful in its simplicity, Richard McLaren told Reuters after releasing an explosive report on Monday that detailed widespread doping and manipulation of tests by Russian athletes and officials”.
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The report comes after reports Sunday revealed that the head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, Travis Tygart, had called on the International Olympics Committee (IOC) to ban the entire Russian team from the upcoming Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
IOC president Thomas Bach said the committee wouldn’t hesitate to apply the toughest sanctions available.
But he did not make any recommendations for the future of the Russian team at the Rio Olympics, saying it was up to others, including the International Olympic Committee, to “absorb and act upon” the 97-page report released Monday.
The World Anti-Doping Agency had McLaren investigate allegations made by former Rodchenkov following the report.
A new report reveals that Russian Federation has been systematically concealing positive drug tests since 2011, confirming what The New York Times once called “one of the most elaborate – and successful – doping ploys in sports history”.
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. It included the run-up to the London 2012 Olympics, as well as during the athletics World Championships in Moscow and the World University Games in Kazan in 2013 and the Winter Olympics in Sochi a year later.
New Zealand has long supported worldwide calls for WADA to investigate serious allegations against nations who have failed to honestly implement the World Anti-Doping Code, but Mr Steel says there must also be consequences where serious wrongdoing is exposed.
McLaren’s report said it did, and the investigator said he was “unwaveringly confident in my report”.
“All athletes have a right to clean sport and a right to compete clean”. As Tess van Straaten reports, Victoria’s Olympic community says the IOC needs to send a strong message.
WADA, which hired arbitrator Richard McLaren to lead the investigation, called on the International Olympic Committee to decline entries of all Russian athletes to this summer’s Olympics.
The report says Mutko’s ministry cooperated with agents from the FSB (successors to the KGB) to infiltrate anti-doping laboratories in Moscow and Sochi and switch out tainted urine samples with clean samples so that chosen athletes could dope with impunity.
The track and field team was subsequently banned from competing in Rio in June.
Wada does not have the authority to directly ban a country from the Olympics, but they can recommend sanctions to the IOC.
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Anything short of a complete ban on Russian participation would seriously undermine worldwide confidence in the Olympic movement’s dedication to stopping fraud.
