The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) called for Russian Federation to be completely banned from the Rio Olympics and other worldwide sport after a report found widespread state action to hide doping across “a vast majority” of winter and summer sports.
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Tallent linked both the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) statements to his twitter feed after the release of the report.
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.
The report, known as the McLaren report after the investigator who led it, concludes that a Moscow lab was the last-resort “failsafe” that would make sure an initial positive test result disappeared if all other steps failed.
Wada does not have the authority to directly ban a country from the Olympics, but they can recommend sanctions to the IOC.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) did not spell out whether it would heed growing calls for Olympic bans already imposed on Russia’s track and field athletes and weightlifters to be extended to all its competitors in Games in Rio de Janeiro in August. In a move that accentuates how complicated the matter can become, the International Olympic Committee has said there is no contingency for a large group of Russians competing under a neutral flag – that Russians should compete for the Russian team if they’re allowed in.
But 68 Russian track-and-field athletes are appealinc1g to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to compete in Rio; their hearing is Thursday.
Defending Olympic champion Julius Brink says he was shocked by the scope of the cheating, but he still doesn’t think all Russian athletes should be punished by missing Rio.
WADA issued a seven-point list of requests after it published a report which confirmed claims of state-backed Russian cheating at the Sochi Olympics and beyond.
“The fact that the commission didn’t give any recommendations to ban Russian team from the Olympics in Rio is a positive fact”, the head of the Russian Olympic committee Alexander Zhukov told the state run news organization TASS, adding that the report needed to be studied in greater detail before he could comment further.
He called the McLaren report a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sports and on the Olympic Games.
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The 25-minute film titled “The Doping Trap” was distributed to journalists in advance of its premier on the state-owned sport channel Match TV. Several national anti-doping organizations, including from Canada and the United States, were awaiting McLaren’s findings to see if they would push for a total ban of the Russian team. Meanwhile, he described tactics he labeled “disappearing positive methodology” that began in 2011, shortly after Russia’s disappointing performance at the Vancouver Olympics. The findings of the McLaren report mark a very dark day for sport.
