The move comes in the wake of an independent report, written by Western University Law Professor Richard McLaren and released by WADA on Monday, that alleges numerous Russian athletes took performance-enhancing drugs at previous Olympics, including the 2014 Winter Games, hosted by the Russian city of Sochi.
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Drug Free Sport New Zealand supports the position of dozens of its peers in calling for a ban on Russian participation at the Rio Games after damning allegations of state-sponsored doping by Russian athletes were confirmed this morning.
The state-sponsored cheating happened after an “abysmal” medal count at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010, WADA said.
The International Olympic Committee’s president, Thomas Bach, will lead a conference call of his 15-member executive board to discuss fallout of the McLaren report.
Federation Internationale de Football Association made no mention of Mutko in its own statement about the McLaren report and said it will ask WADA to share information about alleged cover-ups of doping in Russian soccer.
A WADA investigation into allegations of doping by Russian athletes has found that the country’s sports ministry oversaw a scheme to manipulate positive test results.
FIFA added that the soccer-governing body “is confident that the Local Organizing Committee and the Russian government are going to deliver an outstanding event for football fans two years from now”.
“I call upon the leadership of the International Olympic Committee to follow up on the recommendations and enact it, and not exploit technicalities”, he said in a conference call on Monday featuring members of the WADA Athletes Commission and International Olympic Committee athletes group.
McLaren also said that his findings pertained to “Russian athletes competing in a wide range of disciplines … not just track and field”.
He said a US-Canadian letter pushing for a total ban on Russian competitors at Rio was based on “rampant speculation” about the findings. Wrestling, meanwhile, accounted for 28 of the 312 unreported positives.
But McLaren said the bottle tampering in Sochi was a one-shot deal.
The McLaren report has had a mixed response in Russian Federation.
The report says Mutko’s ministry cooperated with agents from the FSB (successors to the KGB) to infiltrate anti-doping laboratories in Moscow and Sochi and switch out tainted urine samples with clean samples so that chosen athletes could dope with impunity.
“WADA also recommends that Russian government officials be denied access to global competitions, including Rio 2016”. Clean athletes from New Zealand and the rest of the world need to be reassured that those they compete against are subject to anti-doping programmes that have integrity.
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Rodchenkov, now in hiding in the United States, also alleges he doped athletes before the 2012 Olympics in London, the 2013 World Athletics Championships in Moscow and the 2015 World Swimming Championships in Kazan.
