Though the games are less than three weeks away, the International Olympic Committee said it would “explore the legal options” and would weigh a collective ban “versus the right to individual justice”.
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An independent Commission, headed up by Professor Richard McLaren, set up by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on Monday delivered a report that deemed Russian Federation to be guilty of operating a state-dictated system to protect doped athletes.
It will lean on the decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sport on Thursday with regards to appeals by 68 Russian track and field athletes.
Among the Russian officials banned from the Rio Games on Tuesday was the country’s minister of sport, Vitaly Mutko.
Given the revelations in the McLaren report, which was released on Monday by the World Anti-Doping Agency, which said Russia was guilty of state-sponsored doping at the 2014 Winter Olympics, the IOC has also demanded that all Russian athletes that competed in the Sochi games should have their drug samples re-tested.
The Canadian law professor’s report said it was “inconceivable” that Mutko did not know what was going on and accused him of personally intervening to cover up a positive test belonging to a foreign player in the Russian Premier League.
He remains in his post but his deputy Yuri Nagornykh is among a group of officials who have been suspended on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The investigation focused on two main strands of doping manipulation in Russian Federation at the Moscow and Sochi anti-doping laboratories – both of which were under the Ministry of Sport’s control.
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.
Given that Russian Federation hosts numerous winter sports events, such as World Cup events in biathlon, cross country skiing and speed skating, this is likely to have a significant knock-on effect if implemented.
In a statement he added that the officials named in the report would be temporarily suspended.
So far, only Stepanova – who left Russian Federation in 2014 and now lives in the United States – and long jumper Darya Klishina, who trains in Florida, have been granted such eligibility. She is banned for life from the London race and five other major marathons, and got a reduced 2 1/2-year track-and-field ban from anti-doping authorities after cooperating with their investigation.
The McLaren report is only the most recent in a series of revelations about widespread doping in Russian sport.
The IOC Executive Board on Tuesday said it will no longer back the 2019 European Games, set to take place in Russia, and has asked all Winter Olympic Sports Federations to find alternative host nations for any upcoming events.
The letter encourages exceptions for Russia-born athletes who can prove they were subject to strong anti-doping systems in other countries.
It claimed that hundreds of positive drugs tests had been hidden and methods of deception included a “mouse-hole” in a laboratory wall, the use of table salt to tamper with samples and undercover FSB officers posing as sewer engineers, giving them clearance to enter the laboratories. “But we must go on, we can not lose Russian sport”, Mutko stressed.
McLaren said in his report that his investigation, carried out in just 57 days, was only the tip of the iceberg.
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The IOC has ordered the immediate re-testing of all Russian athletes who took part, as well as a full enquiry.
