Russia’s deputy minister of sports would direct lab workers which positive samples to send through and which to hold back.
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The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency is one of several sports organizations that said it would call for a full ban of the Russian team if the report showed evidence of a widespread, state-sponsored doping conspiracy.
The report says Russia’s security service broke into supposedly tamper-proof urine sample bottles to help doping cheats win medals at the Sochi Olympics. Travis Tygart, the US Anti-Doping Agency chief executive, said: “The McLaren Report has concluded, beyond a reasonable doubt, a mind-blowing level of corruption within both Russian sport and government”. In the report is documentation that 11 positive samples from Russian soccer players disappeared under the state paid doping scheme.
– The Moscow Laboratory operated, for the protection of doped Russian athletes, within a state-dictated failsafe system.
The investigation was led by Canadian sports lawyer Richard McLaren, who sat on the independent commission that previous year exposed doping and corruption in Russian track and field, leading to its exclusion from global competition.
Corroborating allegations made by Grigory Rodchenkov, the former director of the Moscow laboratory, the report exposed a startling operation, in which dirty doping -samples were replaced by clean one-s.
On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said officials named as directly responsible in the doping scheme would be suspended.
The report by the World Anti-Doping Agency investigator says Nagornykh directed workers at Moscow’s anti-doping laboratory on which positive samples to send through and which to hold back. More than 240 of the 312 “Saves” came from track and field and wrestling, but other sports involved included swimming, rowing, snowboarding – even table tennis.
The IOC executive board will meet via conference call Tuesday to make initial decisions on possible sanctions for the Rio Games.
Reedie said WADA is working to establish non-binding guidelines that will help the IOC and global sports federations identify exceptions to the Russian ban – notably, Russian athletes who trained in other countries that had robust, clean anti-doping systems. But 68 Russian track-and-field athletes are appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to compete in Rio.
A Wada-commissioned report released yesterday said the Russian Ministry of Sport “directed, controlled and oversaw” the regime, with nearly every Olympic sport implicated, from athletics and football, to curling and table tennis. 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.
Those letters were written in anticipation of the sort of results McLaren delivered Monday – results that were previewed in a mostly overlooked section of the IAAF report, released in June, that called for the Russian track team’s ouster.
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The World Anti-Doping Agency investigator, Richard McLaren, says scratches on the bottles were noted by a trained expert’s eye and using a microscope. The McLaren report is due Friday, July 15, 2016, with public release set for next Monday.
