An investigation, unveiled in Toronto yesterday by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren for Wada, found the FSB secret service helped “the state-dictated fail-safe system” carried out by the sports ministry and covering 30 sports. “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”.
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The report also found that high-ranking officials had hundreds of positive tests recorded as negatives. McLaren’s report said it did, and the investigator said he was “unwaveringly confident in my report”. This in sharp contrast to only 12 percent of foreign athletes.
The report says Russia’s doping programme started in late 2011, and was in place for the London Olympics in 2012 and the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014.
The Deputy Minister of Sport, Yuri Nagornykh, decided who would benefit from a cover-up and who would not be protected.
“There was a small tunnel, available for someone to insert their arm to pass through it with a doping sample bottle”.
“We are seeing a risky return to politics interfering with sport”, Putin said in a statement issued by the Kremlin on Monday (NZT Tuesday).
McLaren said the evidence of tampering with sample bottles in Sochi was apparent and that similar bottles could be used at Rio without fear.
“A mind-blowing level of corruption within both Russian sport and government, ‘” is what Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, called it. The quarantined samples would go through normal testing and be registered with WADA.
He said a US-Canadian letter pushing for a total ban on Russian competitors at Rio was based on “rampant speculation” about the findings.
The International Olympic Committee’s president, Thomas Bach, will lead a conference call of his 15-member executive board to discuss fallout of the McLaren report.
The McClaren report is just the latest in a litany of mounting accusations against Russian Federation.
Wada do not have the authority to impose bans on athletes, but have recommended that governing bodies or the International Olympic Committee to do so.
In the ongoing case involving Russia’s track team, it was that sport’s federation, the IAAF, that ultimately banned the team from the Olympics.
The New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC) released a statement early this morning saying the findings were: “shocking and deeply concerning” and that its thoughts are “with the clean athletes around the world that have been negatively impacted by the long-term systematic cheating”.
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He affirmed that athletes were among the losers as they could not take part in such competitions. The IAAF, which governs global track and field, has already banned track and field. “It is for others to take and absorb and act upon my report”.
