The investigation into doping allegations from the Sochi Olympics will be overseen by a professor of law at Western University.
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All samples will be collected by foreign companies and analyzed in laboratories accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), while planning of those tests will be carried out by UKAD, Britain’s anti-doping agency, the ministry said.
Putin commented on the forthcoming investigation at a news conference during a Sochi summit with Russian Federation and countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
It was during those games, according to an interview Rodchenkov gave to the New York Times, that Russian anti-doping officials ran a clandestine night-time operation to cover up Russian competitors’ positive test results.
Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko penned an op-ed in London’s Sunday Times apologizing for the scandal.
Russia, found a year ago by the World Anti-Doping Agency to have been running a state-sponsored doping programme, is already at serious risk of having no track and field representation at the Olympics this summer, while the findings from 250 further retrospective tests from London 2012 will be released later this month.
Thirty-one athletes from six sports could be banned from this year’s Rio Olympics after failing dope tests when 454 samples were reexamined from the 2008 Games, the International Olympic Committee said on Tuesday.
The Russians are also now banned from worldwide competition following a Wada report.
Mutko said that during the Sochi Games the drug-testing lab had 18 foreign nationals and was equipped with CCTV cameras, including in its corridors.
The IOC said earlier this week that it would begin retesting samples from the Sochi Olympics following Rodchenkov’s claims.
“Should there be evidence of an organized system contaminating other sports, the global federations and the IOC would have to make the hard decision between collective responsibility and individual justice”.
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“Sports must be free of doping, it must be honest, there must be honest competition”, Putin said.
