WADA does not have the ability to ban athletes, but they can recommend that governing bodies take action.
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In a leaked letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) the officials from the United States and Canadian anti-doping agencies call for a complete ban on Russians if the Sochi report compiled by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren is damning.
Several national anti-doping agencies have called for a blanket ban on Russians attending the Rio Games ahead of the publication later on Monday of a report into allegations of state-backed doping at the Sochi Winter Olympics.
McLaren presented his findings in Toronto on Monday, concluding that Russia’s government, security services and sporting authorities colluded to hide doping across a range of sports.
McLaren described the deceptions to Reuters as “beautiful in it’s simplicity”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has consistently denied doping by athletes coordinated by the state.
He documented a corrupt system developed for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in which urine taken at the games, revealing athletes’ use of banned performance-enhancing substances, was secretly switched with clean samples.
That punishment could come as early as Tuesday when members of the International Olympic Committee reconvene in an emergency meeting to address the report.
Rodchenkov, who was sacked after the first WADA-funded investigation into doping in Russian athletics previous year, has been in hiding in the United States ever since and has been branded a “criminal” and a “traitor” by senior Russian figures. That programme involved the switching of dirty samples with clean ones and prevented Russian athletes, including more than a dozen medal winners, from testing positive.
“Given that there was an bad lot of the corruption going on in the system in Russian Federation, they should have picked it up much earlier and it should’ve been WADA who did this and not investigative journalists”, Mr Mazanov said.
Athletes chosen to test negative would have samples labelled as “save” and would be entered into WADA’s Anti-Doping Administration and Management System (ADAMS) as a negative sample.
The independent findings will increase pressure for all Russians – not just those in track and field events – to be banned from the games in Brazil.
“The IAAF will of course seek further information on the 139 cases mentioned in the McLaren report and cross reference it with its own data”.
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“In the meantime, we are focused on preparing Team USA to compete at the upcoming Rio Games and will rely on the IOC, WADA and the worldwide federations to impose sanctions that are appropriate in relation to the magnitude of these offenses, and that give clean athletes some measure of comfort that they will be competing on a level playing field in Rio”, Blackmun said.
