In a leaked letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) the officials from the USA 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.
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The International Olympic Committee has postponed a decision on whether to ban the entire Russian Olympic team from the Rio Games but has announced a raft of measures in response to Monday’s report of state-directed doping.
The commission also concluded that the system of concealing positive doping tests at the Moscow anti-doping laboratory had been in effect from late 2011 to August 2015.
The Russian Olympic Committee said it meant to take 387 sportsmen and women to Rio, including 68 track-and-field athletes who are now appealing a doping ban at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Switzerland.
Russia’s track and field team is already banned from the games because of widespread doping, and Isinbayeva’s hopes rest on a successful appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
But Dick Pound, who was WADA’s first president, said he feared the International Olympic Committee was loath to take such a step, leaving doubts over any athlete participating under the Russian flag.
Earlier Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said a meeting between Putin and Russia’s Olympic athletes, previously scheduled for Thursday, would no longer take place.
Thomas Bach, President of the IOC, expressed shock at this attack “on the integrity of sports and on the Olympic Games”.
Meanwhile, WADA’s athlete committee described the findings as “truly shocking” and backed calls for a Russian ban at Rio.
The last such schism was in the 1980s, when the United States and Soviet Union each boycotted Olympics hosted by the rival superpower.
The IOC will not grant accreditation to any person implicated in the Independent Person Report for the Games.
“It is going to be very hard to satisfy anybody that someone in that system who is at a level that gets him or her to an Olympic Games is in fact clean”.
An Olympic tournament without Russian Federation is nothing more than an “ordinary tournament”, according to UFC heavyweight Bilyal Makhov.
Zhukov said his committee did not discuss the McLaren report at its meeting, although he also did not rule out legal action if Russian Federation is hit with a total ban from the games.
First of all though, the International Olympic Committee lawyers have to explore what legal options there are for a blanket exclusion of Russian athletes for the Olympics and how this is also compatible with athletes’ individual rights.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called the doping allegations a unsafe return to. letting politics interfere with sport..
The world’s governing body of athletics, however, emphasized that Russians, admitted to competitions on an individual basis, would be unable to perform as part of the national team and would participate only under the neutral flag.
For their part, the Russians have reacted to the McLaren report with the same mixture of anger, defiance and qualified acceptance that greeted earlier incriminating reports by Richard Pound, an IAAF task force and UK Anti-Doping, which is now overseeing drug-testing in Russia on behalf of WADA.
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The IOC said the provisional measures would apply until December 31, and be reviewed by the IOC that month.
