Bach’s condemnation of WADA escalates a feud between the Olympics and anti-doping bodies which has broken out in the final days before the Rio Games. Please click the button below to manage your account.
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Olympic committee president Thomas Bach criticized the doping agency for bringing up the serious charges of what he called a “contemptuous system of doping” and cover-ups in Russian Federation only weeks before the games were due to start on August 5, giving his committee little time to act.
Reedie also said the Russian revelations “shook the world to its shoelaces” and had put WADA and the International Olympic Committee, as well as many athletes, in a hard spot.
The International Olympic Committee said it “will explore the legal options with regard to a collective ban of all Russian athletes for the Olympic Games 2016 versus the rights to individual justice”.
“The result is death and devastation”, he said at the morning session.
The swimmers were implicated in a report by World Anti-Doping Agency investigator Richard McLaren that detailed state-sponsored doping in Russian Federation across more than two dozen summer and winter sports.
“If proven true, such a contemptuous system of doping is an unprecedented attack on the integrity of sport and on the Olympic Games”, Bach said. “The cynical ‘collateral damage” approach is not what the Olympic movement stands for”.
Israeli member Alex Gilady echoed that feeling.
Vitaly Mutko spoke during a visit to Paris-based UNESCO on Monday where he presented a report on what is being done in Russia to fight doping – after the World Anti-Doping Agency accused the Russian government of directing a vast cover-up.
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Volleyball’s worldwide federation, the FIVB, announced it too was submitting all 44 of Russia’s roster for the beach and indoor competitions to the global Olympic Committee (IOC) and Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) for final approval.
A ban on the Russian track-and-field team going to the Games was imposed last November by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) after an independent report uncovered state-sponsored doping in Russian athletics.
Argentine member Gerardo Werthein also laid into WADA, saying “the failure to investigate serious and credible allegations more swiftly has left the sports movement.in a very hard position facing incredibly hard decisions in an impossible timeframe”.
“Why should WADA not be responsible for the violations made by the anti-doping labs it has accredited?” he said.
Argentine member Gerardo Werthein added: “At times WADA has seemed to be more interested in publicity and self-promotion rather than doing its job as a regulator”.
Mutko said he hoped the final size of Russia’s Olympic team would be known by today even though final appeals at the worldwide sports tribunal are still being heard.
“I have always been and will always be a clean athlete and have been vocal in my anti-doping stance throughout my career”, she said in a statement.
However British member Adam Pengilly, a former skeleton racer who sits on the athletes commission, was the only one to vote against the call.
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In total there have been 11 cases registered by the Olympic division of CAS since it opened in Rio on July 26, the same number as for the entire period of the 2012 Games in London.
