The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) believes that it should impose a ban after commissioning a report which found that urine samples of Russian competitors were manipulated across the “vast majority” of summer and winter Olympic sports from late 2011 to August 2015.
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The issue is complicated as Russia’s track and field athletes are awaiting the Court of Arbitration of Sport to announce the results of an appeal against their suspension from competition.
Federation Internationale de Football Association promised “appropriate steps” after Monday’s explosive report into alleged systematic state-sanctioned cheating at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi but made clear the bombshell claims that Russia’s government “directed, controlled and oversaw” urine sample manipulation to avoid cheating athletes being caught would have no direct negative effect on the World Cup. “If the McLaren report is confirmed, the logical outcome is a broad exclusion” of Russian athletes”, Hoermann said.
Those athletes, WADA said, should be allowed to compete in Rio under a neutral flag.
McLaren said his team uncovered forensic evidence that proved Rodchenkov’s claims.
But a blanket ban is not a sure thing.
Athletes who competed at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi were cheated out of medals thanks to a state-sanctioned doping program managed by the Russian secret service, according to a report released on Monday by an independent investigator.
Tuesday (Wednesday in Manila) is a huge day for Russia’s Olympic status on two fronts in the IOC’s home city of Lausanne, Switzerland.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who staked his reputation on the Sochi Games, the costliest in history, said the WADA-backed report was the result of political interference and that the Olympic movement could now split.
McLaren’s bombshell report said the sports ministry under Vitaly Mutko organised the subterfuge under which tainted urine samples were replaced and kept away from worldwide observers.
The IOC is discussing a possible complete ban for the Russian team for the Olympic Games for all sports.
In its statement released on Tuesday, Switzerland-based ASOIF said it “received the McLaren report and recognises the gravity and extent of the doping activities in Russia noting that 20 of its 28 member global Federations have Russian athletes who are implicated by its findings”.
A bombshell report on “state-dictated” doping in Russia, which will host the 2018 World Cup, said the manipulation of tainted Russian samples was controlled by Mutko’s ministry.
“The right to participate at the games can not be stolen from an athlete, who has duly qualified and has not been found guilty of doping”, said Bruno Grandi, president of gymnastics’ worldwide federation.
It expressed full support toward “the most drastic measures against those who use or abet the usage of doping”, maintaining that its “principled position” is to defend the rights of clean athletes.
In the report, McLaren’s team provides an overview of the manner in which sports veiled positive doping tests.
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While the report says much of the day-to-day administration of doping cover-ups was done by deputy minister Yuri Nagornykh and Mutko’s adviser, Nataliya Zhelanova, Mutko is accused of having ordered a cover-up in one case, that of an unnamed foreign soccer player in the Russian Premier League.
