“No more athletes will be disqualified”.
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If a countrywide ban is implemented, it’s not completely clear how it’d impact Russian athletes competing as independents. Gilberto Amauri de Godoy Filho says it will take “much of the brightness of the competition, but it is necessary to consider curbing doping”.
There has been no evidence that other countries have also been involved in state-sponsored doping. “We do need to wait to see if the report does confirm those details”.
The state-sponsored cheating happened after an “abysmal” medal count at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010, WADA said. But individual athletes can compete as neutrals, if they prove they are clean.
He accused Beckie Scott, the Canadian chairman of the WADA athletes commission of being “only interested in punishing hundreds of clean Russian athletes for crimes that they did not commit”.
However, after the report was read out, it issued a seven-point list of requests.
He insisted there was no leak of his report, as several sports organizations suggested over the weekend, when draft letters calling for Russia’s ban were leaked to the media.
WADA President Craig Reedie said he would to respond “firmly and effectively” should Rodchenkov’s allegations be proven, admitting it would be a “high-profile moment that we will have to deal with”.
Russian Olympic chief Alexander Zhukov said he was pleased that McLaren’s report did not include recommendations on punishment.
The Wada report looked primarily into Russia’s conduct at the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, but also at other world events.
He said the USOC will rely on the IOC, WADA and global sports federations to apply appropriate sanctions.
Tygart, who was instrumental in exposing Lance Armstrong as a drug cheat, called on the worldwide community to rally together “to ensure this unprecedented level of criminality never again threatens the sports we cherish”.
Russia’s track and field teams have already been banned from Rio after a massive doping ring was uncovered. Last week, he said if the report was as damning as expected, he would push for such a ban.
Russian state media called into doubt the results shortly before they were published.
Mutko is also a member of world soccer body FIFA’s ruling council and chairs the organizing committee of the 2018 World Cup being hosted by Russian Federation.
“We have an obligation to help safeguard clean athletes around the globe by working closely with worldwide partners to support the development of robust anti-doping practices in countries where these are weak”, said UKAD chief executive Nicole Sapstead.
– The samples from pre-selected athletes at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, had positive tests discarded through an elaborate system the report calls Disappearing Positive Methodology (DPM). Stepanov is married to former Russian middle-distance runner Yuliya Stepanova, who backed up the claims.
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach, previously reluctant to impose any collective punishments on Russian Federation, issued a statement to say he wants to study McLaren’s 103-page report carefully before making any decisions but he has already called for an urgent meeting of his executive board on Tuesday.
The statement said the International Olympic Committee executive board would hold a conference call to discuss immediate sanctions surrounding the Rio Olympics.
Zhukov’s letter came after Russia’s sports minister Vitaly Mutko condemned the situation around the McLaren report as “just a farce and political pressure”.
WADA does not normally make recommendations for discipline when its rules are broken, but prefers to present evidence to the International Olympic Committee and sports federations for them to decide what should be done. The cover-up spans nearly every sport and many years, both before and after the 2014 Olympics in Sochi.
McLaren’s report said it did, and the investigator said he was “unwaveringly confident in my report”. The International Association of Athletics Federation previously banned Russian Track and Field from the Olympics and the IOC upheld that ban, but as the Games approach, there have been calls for an outright ban on all Russian participation in Rio.
In a leaked letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) the officials from the USA and Canadian anti-doping agencies call for a complete ban on Russians if the Sochi report compiled by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren is damning.
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The investigation came off the back of claims made by former Russian anti-doping laboratory director Grigory Rodchenkov previous year to the New York Times that he was ordered to cover up the drug use of at least 15 Sochi 2014 medal winners.
