The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) called for Russian Federation to be completely banned from the Rio Olympics and other global sport after a report found widespread state action to hide doping across “a vast majority” of winter and summer sports.
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The recommendation comes after a report was published by the WADA on Monday, which found that Russian state services and sports officials had collaborated on a large-scale doping ring, resulting in at least 312 falsified lab results for Russian athletes competing in the 2014 Sochi Olympics. That program involved dark-of-night bottle tampering in order to switch dirty samples with clean ones; it prevented Russian athletes, including more than a dozen medal winners, from testing positive.
The World Anti-Doping Agency’s executive board wants the International Olympic Committee to ban all Russian teams from the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
Russian track and field athletes are banned from worldwide competition, including the Rio Olympics.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has suspended Deputy Sports Minister Yury Nagornykh, who was named in a report on the doping of Russian athletes at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, the government said on Monday.
Russian sport has been under extensive scrutiny in recent months following the decision to ban the country’s track and field athletes from competition at the summer Olympics in Rio.
Members also said they “sincerely hope that technicalities are not used to circumvent these appropriate sanctions” and called for McLaren and investigators to be allowed to continue their investigation.
Brazilian beach volleyball star Emanuel Rego says there are too many innocent athletes who would be punished in a complete ban.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) executive board will hold an emergency telephone conference today to decide provisional sanctions, over what IOC president Thomas Bach called “a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sports and on the Olympic Games”. Speaking two months ago, Bach made clear the International Olympic Committee would take a tough approach on doping.
And he brushed aside a claim from Pat Hickey, head of European Olympic Committees, that the report was compromised because it had been leaked in advance to anti-doping advocates, including Canadian former skier Beckie Scott, who heads WADA’s athletes committee.
Russian track-and-field athletes had already been banned from this summer’s Olympics for using performance-enhancing drugs.
Still, when Russian Federation hosted worldwide sports events which brought independent observers ” the Sochi Olympics, the 2013 track world championships ” then deeper deception was needed.
“When you have a state-sponsored system which is running a doping program and also subverting results. that’s enormous”.
It says Russian athletes benefited from what the report called the “Disappearing Positive Methodology”, whereby positive doping samples would go missing.
Tygart’s statement did not include a call for a full ban of the Russian team from the Rio Games.
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He said had “unwavering confidence” in the 103-page report’s findings, having only included items that could be proven “beyond reasonable doubt”. “McLaren said that no one offered him any interview, no one offered to show anything, and for that reason the report was one-sided and based on Rodchenkov’s statements”, Rossiya 1 correspondent, Irina Sokolova, told viewers from Toronto.
