Russian Federation operated a state-dictated doping system during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and other events, an independent investigator said Monday in a report likely to lead to demands for Russian Federation to be completely banned from the Rio Games.
Advertisement
The Sochi laboratory meanwhile “operated a unique (urine) sample swapping methodology to enable doped Russian athletes to compete at the (2014 Winter) Games”, it said.
In releasing their findings, the World-Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, called for Russian athletes to be banned from the Rio Olympics next month – but the report also drew attention to the next big event Russia will be hosting: the World Cup in 2018.
“Since WADA’s Independent Commission report, senior Russian politicians have started to publicly acknowledge the existence of long-standing doping practices in Russia and have conceded that a significant culture change is required”, WADA Director General Olivier Niggli said in a news release.
McLaren’s report directly names deputy sports minister Yuri Nagornykh and chief anti-doping advisor Natalia Zhelanova as being central to this scheme, but also says it was “inconceivable” that sports minister Vitaly Mutko, who also runs Russian football and sits on FIFA’s council, was unaware of what was going on.
WADA consequently called for all Russian competitors and officials to be banned from the Rio Olympics next month after the investigation by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said accusations against Russian athletes were based on evidence provided by a person of wretched reputation, according to Russian news agency TASS.
– Russian officials knew that Russian athletes competing at Sochi used doping substances.
“I think the most appropriate response would be for the national Olympic committee to be banned”, says Paul Melia of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport.
In June, the International Olympic Committee announced it was up to individual sports federations to decide whether to permit Russian athletes to compete in Rio.
“My mandate was to establish facts, not to make recommendations”, McLaren said, according to The Guardian.
“Now we are seeing a risky recurrence of interference of politics in sport”, the Kremlin statement said.
“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 global 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”.
Putin said the modern Olympic movement, more than a century old, “may now be on the brink of splitting”.
The report was commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency and it confirms widespread, state-sponsored doping in Russian sports.
Advertisement
Pat Hickey, an influential International Olympic Committee member from Ireland, initially characterized the email as premature, saying: “My concern is that there seems to have been an attempt to agree an outcome before any evidence has been presented”.
