RUSSIAN PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin called Friday for a new anti-doping commission to be created to shape Russia’s future strategy, as the country faces possible exclusion from the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
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An independent report from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said Russia’s sports ministry directed a vast doping program with support from the state intelligence agency that saw thousands of tainted urine samples destroyed or swapped for clean ones.
The IPC president called the scale of reports’ findings “unimaginable” and said the “findings are of serious concern for everyone committed to clean and honest sport”.
“The IPC has been provided with the names of the para-athletes associated with the 35 “disappearing positive samples” from the Moscow laboratory highlighted in the report”, the IPC said.
The decision that is set to be announced Sunday will determine Russia’s participation in this summer’s Olympics.
“I didn’t come into this sport to stop athletes from competing”, he said in a statement.
Russian Federation is not banned from the Rio Paralympics yet but an IPC statement said the body would consider excluding them from September’s showpiece with a final ruling due in the week commencing August 1.
Kuznetsov asked Reedie whether he thought the results of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics should be revised in light of the doping scandal.
The world athletics body International Olympic Committee reported separately on Friday 45 new doping failures from the last two Games, bringing the total number of positive drug tests to 98 since a retesting programme was launched.
In the report released Monday, the World Anti-Doping Agency said Russian Federation launched an extensive state-sponsored doping program after a poor showing at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, where it won just 15 medals and came in sixth overall.
While the Beijing results are provisional findings, pending the analysis of the b-sample, the 15 tests from London 2012 are positives and from two sports and nine countries.
The new reanalysis once again shows the commitment of the International Olympic Committee in the fight against doping.
The IAAF banned all of the Russian track and field team over allegations of state-sponsored doping but said athletes who prove they were not tainted by their country’s corrupt system could be cleared.
British International Olympic Committee member Adam Pengilly, who sits on the athletes’ commission, believes Russian Federation should be totally excluded from RIo 2016.
“However, I would give a one per cent chance that they may be allowed to the next month’s Olympic Games in Rio”.
Putin repeated the firm position of the Russian government and himself against doping in sports.
A possible outcome from Sunday’s talks could see the International Olympic Committee banning the Russian team while letting each summer sports federation determine an athlete’s eligibility on an individual basis.
The Swiss-based body rejected an appeal against that ban by the Russian Olympic Committee and 68 individual athletes.
The IOC is under pressure to extend the IAAF’s ban on Russian competitors in Rio to all sports.
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Over the years, the coverup orders came from the deputy minister of sport, who favored promising athletes by issuing the code word “Save” and punished those performing poorly with “Quarantine”.
