The report was led by Canadian sports lawyer Richard McLaren, who had sat on the independent commission that a year ago exposed widespread doping and corruption in Russian track and field, leading to its exclusion from global competition.
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Mutko personally intervened to cover up a doping case of “at least one foreign (soccer player) in the Russian League”, according to email evidence obtained by the inquiry, led by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren.
Russia’s deputy minister of sports would direct lab workers which positive samples to send through and which to hold back.
The investigation was led by Canadian sports lawyer Richard McLaren, who sat on the independent commission that past year exposed doping and corruption in Russian track and field, leading to its exclusion from global competition.
– The Moscow Laboratory operated, for the protection of doped Russian athletes, within a state-dictated failsafe system.
It said the catalyst for the development of a system to hide widespread doping had been Russia’s performance at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games, where a country that cherishes its status as a sporting superpower finished 11th, with only three gold medals.
In Sochi itself, where global observers were scrutinising the drug tests, positive results could not simply be brushed away, so a system of sample-swapping was put in place with the help of the FSB intelligence service, the report said.
Still, when Russian Federation hosted global sports events which brought independent observers – the Sochi Olympics, the 2013 track world championships – then deeper deception was needed.
Rodchenkov had spoken of a clandestine night-time operation in which he said staff secretly took urine samples from the lab via a “mouse hole” cut into a wall, and replaced them with clean samples taken from the same athlete months earlier and sometimes manipulated.
WADA mandated McLaren to investigate allegations made by former Moscow anti-doping laboratory director Grigory Rodchenkov in May – he is now in hiding in the United States and wanted by Russian authorities.
US Anti-Doping Agency chief executive Travis T. Tygart said the report had revealed “a mind-blowing level of corruption” in Russian sport and all the way up to Putin’s government. On Monday, Putin said officials named as directly responsible in the doping scheme would be suspended.
“However, the real catalyst to develop the Sochi scheme was the abysmal performance of the Russian delegation at the Vancouver Winter Games in 2010”, the WADA report said Monday.
“In an ideal world, we would’ve done a great deal more work with the data, ‘” he said. “Therefore, the International Olympic Committee will not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organization implicated”.
He was relying on the IOC and worldwide sports federations to figure out appropriate sanctions.
Banishing Russia from the Olympic Games just 17 days before they begin would be one of the most momentous decisions in the history of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
“The right to participate at the games can not be stolen from an athlete, who has duly qualified and has not been found guilty of doping”, said Bruno Grandi, president of gymnastics’ worldwide federation.
Among those not in favor of a full Russian ban were leaders in gymnastics – a sport that was not among the 28 with non-reported positives.
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That urgent verdict is scheduled for Thursday but could be rendered meaningless by an International Olympic Committee blanket ban.
