The International Olympic Committee (IOC) did not spell out whether it would heed growing calls for Olympic bans already imposed on Russia’s track and field athletes and weightlifters to be extended to all its competitors in Games in Rio de Janeiro in August.
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McLaren’s report said the cover up started in 2010 after Russia’s “abysmal” results at the Vancouver Winter Olympics and continued until 2015 after the Sochi Games.
McLaren’s report said allegations made by Moscow’s former anti-doping lab director about sample switching at the Sochi Olympics went much as described in a New York Times story in May.
The International Olympic Committee’s executive board will discuss possible sanctions Tuesday in a conference call, according to a statement released by IOC President Thomas Bach.
WADA president Sir Craig Reedie, who is also the International Olympic Committee vice-president, has now affirmed the organization’s standing on Russia’s participation in the Olympics.
A report by the World Anti-Doping Agency included more details from investigators about how Russian athletes with help from government officials doped and got away with it at the Sochi Olympics.
The leaking of the letter, which was also circulated to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) athlete committee and has the support of national bodies in Germany, Japan and New Zealand, has been criticised by other sport’s world governing bodies.
Canadian law professor Richard McLaren said the ploy was used by Moscow’s anti-doping laboratory to avoid doped Russian athletes being detected.
Craig Reedie, WADA’s president, said: “Shamefully, the McLaren Report corroborates the allegations, exposing a modus operandi of serious manipulation of the doping control process in the satellite laboratory set up in Sochi for the 2014 Games; and, the Moscow laboratory since 2011 and after the Sochi Games”.
Rodchenkov, who was sacked after the first WADA-funded investigation into doping in Russian athletics a year ago, has been in hiding in the United States ever since and has been branded a “criminal” and a “traitor” by senior Russian figures.
He added: “The IOC will not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organisation implicated”.
WADA alleges widespread, organized Russian corruption in the training of its Olympics athletes.
Medvedev’s press secretary Natalia Timakov said on July 18 that the suspension will last “until the investigation into the [World Anti-Doping Agency’s] report on the involvement of Russian state officials in the doping scandal is over”.
The report alleges the Moscow laboratory operated within a state-dictated failsafe system and that the Sochi laboratory was guilty of sample-swapping to allow doping athletes to compete at the Sochi Games. As Tess van Straaten reports, Victoria’s Olympic community says the IOC needs to send a strong message.
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.
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The agency has also recommended that all Russian government officials be denied access to all worldwide competitions, including the Rio Olympics.
