The International Olympic Committee says they won’t hesitate in taking the toughest sanctions against Russian Federation which could end with the team banned from the summer games.
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According to the report, the state-sponsored cheating happened after an “abysmal” medal count at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010.
Russian President Vladimir Putin staked his reputation on the Sochi Games, which at around $US50 billion ($66 billion) was the most expensive in Olympic history.
McLaren sent a random amount of stored samples from “protected Russian athletes” at Sochi 2014 to an anti-doping laboratory in London to see if they had scratch marks around the necks of the bottles that would indicate they had been manipulated.
WADA’s president, Craig Reedie, is also an IOC vice president who will take part in the scheduled conference call requested by IOC President Thomas Bach.
Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko directed the doping cover-up of footballers, according to the WADA report.
“The Moscow laboratory was operated for the protection of athletes doped with the complicity of the state, a cheating system that we have described as being contrary to good behavior”. Grigory Rodchenkov’s claim that he doped dozens of athletes before the Games.
It pointed to “the active participation” and assistance of the FSB federal security service, athletes training groups and the Moscow and Sochi laboratories.
With the Rio Games due to start August 5, US Olympic Committee chief executive Scott Blackmun said the IOC, WADA and world governing bodies must “impose sanctions that are appropriate in relation to the magnitude of these offenses and give clean athletes some measure of comfort they will be competing on a level playing field in Rio”.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of USADA, called the report proof of a “mind-blowing level of corruption” and urged the global community to come together to ensure that what he called an unprecedented level of criminality never threatens sports again. It did not say which officials would be affected.
“That SAVE decision was made by Minister Mutko and not Deputy Minister Nagornykh”.
Shortly after the report was released, the World Anti-Doping Agency’s executive board said it wants the International Olympic Committee to ban all Russian teams from the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. He said an intricate doping program was “working like a Swiss watch” and helped at least 15 Russian medalists.
In Moscow, student Vsevolod Zubov said: “It’s unusual to single out Russian sportsmen for doping, because look at other countries – every other sportsman uses steroids, they fail doping tests, but no one there is banned – it’s all political”.
Speaking to the ABC, Boyle said the report’s findings came as no surprise.
The full McLaren independent investigations report can be downloaded here.
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If it finds in their favour, there would seem to be little chance of a wider ban on Russian competitors holding up.
