MORE MEDALISTS CAUGHT FOR PRIOR DOPING: Forty-five more athletes, including 23 medalists from the 2008 Beijing Games, have been caught for doping after retesting of samples from the last two Olympics, the IOC said Friday.
Advertisement
Of the 45 failed tests announced Friday, 30 were from Beijing, including 23 medalists, and 15 were from London. However, an International Olympic Committee spokeswoman, Emmanuelle Moreau, confirmed later to The Associated Press that the London positive tests included eight medal winners.
Officials in Moscow have slammed the decision by CAS to reject its appeal against a ban from the IAAF, calling it part of a broader political campaign by the West against Russian Federation.
The news comes a day after the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld the Rio Olympic ban on Russia’s track and field teams in connection to a multiyear, systematic doping program known by the government.
A decision is expected in the week commencing August 1 whether to ban Russian Federation from the Paralympics in September.
“The APC will now await the findings of the IPC’s suspension proceedings, but it is our expectation that any form of systematic doping with Russian Paralympic sport is dealt with in the harshest possible way”.
Vladimir Putin, the current President of Russian Federation, has suggested that the ROC establish an independent anti-doping commission.
At an International Olympic Committee event three days before the opening of the Sochi Olympics, with Putin in attendance, Bach thanked the Russian president in person for his “great commitment” to the games and for the way he “set the pace in this great endeavor”.
“I didn’t come into this sport to stop athletes from competing”, he said in a statement.
The Kremlin strongman ordered officials to cooperate with the IOC and World Anti-Doping Agency and Russia’s Olympic committee to establish an anti-doping commission.
The results are from a second wave of retests and take the total number of athletes who tested positive for prohibited substances to 98, the International Olympic Committee added in a statement.
The McLaren investigation found evidence that Russia’s Sports Ministry and the Center for the Training of Russian National Teams and the Federal Security Service supported the doping programme in Russian sports.
Double Olympic champion pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva called the decision “the funeral of athletics”.
Commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, it looked into claims by Grigory Rodchenkov, the ex-head of Russia’s national anti-doping laboratory.
Advertisement
“We all have a responsibility to protect the integrity of Paralympic sport, which we now know has been mocked and threatened by a doping culture endemic within Russian sport.”
