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Russian inquiry finds cheating went beyond Sochi Olympics

It’s unclear how many 2014 Winter Games medals are linked to the conspiracy, though the New York Times reported in May that four golds were involved.

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Rodchenkov, for example, had claimed that the Russian secret service (FSB) had worked out how to open and re-seal the supposedly tamper-proof bottles that are used for storing urine samples so that the contents could be replaced with “clean” urine.

A view through a fence, decorated with the Olympic rings, shows a building of the federal state budgetary institution “Federal scientific centre of physical culture and sports”, which houses a laboratory accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), in Moscow, Russia on November 11, 2015.

So far International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach has resisted calls for more extensive bans, maintaining the innocence of those athletes who are not breaking anti-doping rules must be respected.

The letter encourages exceptions for Russia-born athletes who can prove they were subject to strong anti-doping systems in other countries.

The Olympic movement faces division in a critical week ahead of the Rio Games with a report Monday, July 18, to set out whether Russia manipulated doping samples, followed quickly by a sports tribunal verdict on 68 Russian athletes demanding to compete in Rio.

“We are all looking forward to the report”, he said.

He said the USOC will rely on the IOC, WADA and worldwide sports federations to apply appropriate sanctions.

On Saturday, Mutko said the WADA report “is an option to influence” CAS, Tass news agency reported.

In November, the World Anti-Doping Agency released a 335-page report detailing “extensive doping use” among Russian track-and-field athletes that was supported by coaches, doctors and laboratory officials. He said an intricate doping program was “working like a Swiss watch” and helped at least 15 Russian medalists. Bach said last week that Klishina should be allowed to take part under the Russian flag.

A statement from Pat Hickey, the president of the European Olympic Committee, said the letter “undermined the integrity and therefore the credibility of this important report”.

“This unprecedented call for such a ban is based on what the United States and Canadian national anti-doping agencies say are the findings of the independent McLaren Report”.

The report does not make any recommendations. Several organizations, including the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, have called for a complete ban of the Russian team.

Those findings also said Russia’s “Ministry of Sport advised the laboratory which of its adverse findings it could report to WADA, and which it had to cover up”.

According to Paul Melia, president of CCES, who oversee anti-doping in Canada, “if Monday’s report confirms the Rodchenkov allegations, then the IOC will have no choice but to ban all Russian athletes from this summer’s Olympic Summer Games in Rio” and that “must be the same effect for the Russian contingent at the Paralympics in September”.

The investigator, Richard McLaren, dubbed Russia’s program the “disappearing positive methodology”.

McLaren said allegations made by Moscow’s former anti-doping lab director about sample switching at the Sochi Olympics went much as described in a New York Times story in May.

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“The McLaren report is yet to be published, but for them (USADA) everything is already clear”.

Drug Free Sport New Zealand chief executive Graeme Steel says his organisation will back global efforts to ban Russia