The WADA report alleged cheating in 20 of the Summer Olympic sports.
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Apart from Zhelanova, Alexei Velikodny from the Center for Sports Training for Russian national teams, deputy director of the Sports Ministry’s science and education department Avak Abalyan, as well as the head of the department for medical and scientific research programmes at the Russian Olympic Committee, Irina Rodionova, have also been suspended after the report, reports TASS.
The Russian president acted quickly to suspend all other leading officials mentioned in McLaren’s report, including Mutko’s deputy Yuri Nagornykh, but the minister himself has survived.
The Association of Summer Olympic International Federations, which represents the 28 sports in the games, said it recognized the “gravity and extent of the doping activities in Russia” as detailed in Monday’s report by World Anti-Doping Agency investigator Richard McLaren.
McLaren said he had found convincing evidence that the Russian ministry of sport hid hundreds of positive drugs tests in the run-up to London 2012, as well as during the World Athletics Championships in Moscow in 2013 and the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014.
After receiving the evidence from a report that it commissioned, WADA called for the IOC to consider a ban of Russia’s entire Olympic team.
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.
Monday’s report said Russian Federation, a traditional sporting superpower, had been stung into action by its performance at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, where it finished 11th, with only three gold medals.
President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “Russia is preparing for the Olympics, the Russian team is preparing for the Olympics”.
It will explore the legal options with regard to a collective ban of all Russian athletes for the Olympic Games 2016 versus the right to individual justice.
But a blanket ban is not a sure thing.
At Sochi, the FSB helped Rodchenkov’s staff destroy supposedly tamper-proof urine samples that would have seen a Russian athlete caught doping and swapping them for clean ones, according to the report.
The IOC says it will still have to take into account a verdict coming this Thursday by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. It puts the International Olympic Committee in the position of ruling against one of its biggest supporters, a nation that spent more than $50 billion hosting the Winter Games in Sochi just two years ago. In this respect, the IOC will have to take the CAS decision on 21 July 2016 concerning the IAAF rules into consideration, as well as the World Anti-Doping Code and the Olympic Charter.
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IOC president Thomas Bach said the committee wouldn’t hesitate to apply the toughest sanctions available.
