Picciani made the claims as the fall-out continues following Richard McLaren’s Independent Commission report into alleged state-sponsored doping by Russian Federation during the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, as well as in competitions in summer sports.
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The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) appointed Professor Richard McLaren to conduct an independent investigation into allegations made by Dr Grigory Rodchenkov, the former director of the WADA-accredited laboratory in Moscow.
The Olympic leadership said it will also have to wait for a Court of Arbitration for Sports decision ruling Thursday on an appeal by 68 Russian athletes against an IAAF ban from competition.
Russia’s participation in the Rio Olympics is hanging in the balance after the International Olympic Committee said on Tuesday (Wednesday NZT) it would “explore legal options” for banning the country from the Games. IOC President Thomas Bach has repeatedly called for a balance between individual justice and collective punishment..
“This is on the one hand between a collective ban for all Russian athletes and on the other hand, the natural rights to individual justice for every clean athlete in the world”, said International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach.
The athletes in the program are Ekatherina Poistogova (800m runner), Alexey Lovchev (weightlifter, banned for doping), Sergey Shubenkov (hurdles world champion), and Alexander Markin (volleyball, failed drug test 2016).
The IOC has chose to withdraw its support for any major event hosted in Russian Federation, including the proposed 2019 European Games, which will come as a hard blow for its biggest backer, IOC vice-president and European Olympic Committees President Pat Hickey of Ireland.
Two high-profile sports lawyers presented each side California-based Howard Jacobs for the Russians, British attorney Jonathan Taylor for the IAAF.
WADA said in a statement Mutko “played within the system”.
Russian Federation is strongly opposed to such a ban and Zhukov said any unilateral decision to quit the Games would also be wrong. Reedie, who is also an International Olympic Committee vice president, presented details of the McLaren report to the executive board Tuesday and answered questions about it, before Bach asked him to recuse himself from the meeting because of a conflict of interest..
The IOC ordered a disciplinary commission to look into what McLaren’s commission called a “state-dictated failsafe system” of drug cheating that included Russia’s secret service swapping dirty urine samples for clean ones through a hole in a wall in Sochi.
At an emergency IOC Executive Board meeting in Switzerland, a day after an independent report detailed a systematic, state-run doping programme in Russian Federation, members fell short of an immediate ban but announced a series of other measures.
Each Russian athlete who competed in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi is ready for his or her doping samples collected at the Games to be re-analysed, Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said. Nevertheless, he insists the International Olympic Committee “will not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organisation implicated”.
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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.
