The International Olympic Committee said it won’t accredit any officials from the Russian Sports Ministry to attend the 2016 Olympics after a report exposed a state-backed doping program for athletes.
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There is an ongoing court hearing in Switzerland, where the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) is considering appeals from Russian track and field athletes against an earlier ban barring them from competing in Rio.
WADA and other anti-doping officials urged the International Olympic Committee to consider the unprecedented step of excluding the entire Russian contingent from the Rio Games. German broadcaster ARD first aired a documentary in late 2014 detailing doping in track in field, largely with evidence provided by Yuliya Stepanova, an 800-meter runner, and Vitaly Stepanov, her husband and a former Russian Anti-Doping Agency employee.
A damning report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) detailed an elaborate cheating scheme run by the sports ministry that affected 30 sports with help from the FSB state intelligence agency.
The IOC board said it would carefully evaluate World Anti-Doping Agency WADA’s independent person (IP) report on doping in Russian Federation.
IAAF President Sebastian Coe added: “The institutionalized and systematic doping in Russian athletics is the reason the IAAF suspended, and then upheld the suspension of, RusAF’s membership and consequently the exclusion of their athletes from worldwide competition”.
It asked WADA to extend the McLaren’s mandate at WADA and to communicate the names of Russian athletes implicated in a method explained in his report whereby positive doping tests were entered as negative, and in the alleged manipulation of the doping tests performed by the Sochi laboratory.
– set up a commission to carry out a “full inquiry” into all of the Russian athletes who competed in Sochi, along with their coaches, officials, and support staff.
Russia’s participation in the Rio Olympics is hanging in the balance.
Today the International Olympic Committee delayed its decision to ban Russian Federation from this summer’s Olympic games.
“Profound cultural, organizational, and procedural changes (are) required before all sports can confidently welcome clean sportsmen and sportswomen from Russian Federation to future worldwide events”, Hansen said in a statement.
The WADA probe by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren quoted Russian whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov as saying it was “inconceivable” that Mutko did not know about the whole doping system.
President Vladimir Putin made the Sochi Games a showcase event and spent more than $50 billion staging the Games.
Issuing an outright ban of Russian athletes is not that simple, said Roger Pielke, a professor at the University of Colorado and expert in the history and governance of sports organizations such as the NCAA, FIFA, and the IOC.
The IOC said it would not give backing to any global events in Russian Federation because of the scandal but had to put back a decision on whether to bar Russian Federation from the Rio Games which start on August 5.
This includes world championships and World Cups, the International Olympic Committee said, calling for winter federations “to actively look for alternative organisers”.
The IOC said the “provisional measures” would apply until December 31, and be reviewed by the IOC that month.
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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.
