Over 1,000 Russian athletes benefited from doping conspiracy, says WADA report - Hindustan Times
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Over 1,000 Russian athletes benefited from doping conspiracy, says WADA report

ByReuters, London
Dec 09, 2016 07:09 PM IST

The second and final part of the report for the World Anti-Doping Agency by Canadian sports lawyer Richard McLaren provided more details of an elaborate state-sponsored doping scheme operated by Russia. It said there was a systematic cover-up, which was refined at the 2012 Olympics, 2013 world athletics championships and 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, and that more than 30 sports, including football, were involved in concealing positive doping samples.

More than 1,000 Russian athletes competing in summer, winter and paralympic sport were involved in or benefited from an institutional conspiracy to conceal positive doping tests, an independent WADA report said on Friday.

The sporting world is bracing for the worst as World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) investigator Richard McLaren released his latest report on Friday. The report stated there was a systematic cover-up, which was refined at the 2012 Olympics, 2013 world athletics championships and 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, and that more than 30 sports, including football, were involved in concealing positive doping samples, substantiating the allegations of state-sponsored cheating and cover-ups in Russia.(AP)
The sporting world is bracing for the worst as World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) investigator Richard McLaren released his latest report on Friday. The report stated there was a systematic cover-up, which was refined at the 2012 Olympics, 2013 world athletics championships and 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, and that more than 30 sports, including football, were involved in concealing positive doping samples, substantiating the allegations of state-sponsored cheating and cover-ups in Russia.(AP)

The second and final part of the report for the World Anti-Doping Agency by Canadian sports lawyer Richard McLaren provided more details of an elaborate state-sponsored doping scheme operated by Russia.

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It said there was a systematic cover-up, which was refined at the 2012 Olympics, 2013 world athletics championships and 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, and that more than 30 sports, including football, were involved in concealing positive doping samples.

Read more | CAS strips Romanian lifter, Russian boxer of Rio Olympics 2016 medals

“We are now able to confirm a cover up that dates back until at least 2011 and continued after the Sochi Olympic Games. It was a cover up that evolved from uncontrolled chaos to an institutionalised and disciplined medal-winning conspiracy,” McLaren told a news conference on Friday.

“It was a cover-up of an unprecedented scale and the second part of this report shows the evidence that increases the number of athletes involved as well as the scope of the conspiracy and cover up.

Read more | IOC extends provisional measures against Russia over doping issue

“We have evidence revealing that more than 500 positive results were reported as negative, including well-known and elite-level athletes, who had their positive results automatically falsified.”

McLaren said Russia won 24 gold, 26 silver and 32 bronze medals at London 2012 and no Russian athlete tested positive.

Lawyer Richard McLaren leaves after delivering his second and final part of a report for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), at a news conference in London, on Friday. (REUTERS)
Lawyer Richard McLaren leaves after delivering his second and final part of a report for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), at a news conference in London, on Friday. (REUTERS)

“Yet the Russian team corrupted the London Games on an unprecedented scale, the extent of which will probably never be fully established,” he said.

Read more | Russian group has been hacking our system for weeks, says WADA president

“The desire to win medals superseded their collective moral and ethical compass and Olympic values of fair play.

“For years international sports competitions have unknowingly been hijacked by the Russians. Coaches and athletes have been playing on an uneven field.”

Elite athletes

The report said a urine sample-swapping technique used at Sochi became regular practice at the Moscow laboratory that dealt with elite athletes.

Read more | Yuliya Zaripova of Russia stripped of London Olympics steeplechase gold medal

It added that four Sochi gold medallists had samples with physiologically impossible salt readings, while 12 Russian Sochi medallists had evidence of tampering with the bottles containing their urine samples.

The report detailed how a clean urine bank existed in the Moscow laboratory, where salt and coffee were added to clean samples to try to fool officials testing “B samples” in supposedly tamper-proof bottles.

The report included evidence of DNA mismatches, where a tampered B sample did not match the DNA of previous specimens and cases of sample swapping between male and female athletes.

Read more | Doping Scandal: Ten Beijing Olympics medallists disqualified after re-testing

The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) said in a statement that 53 percent of the athletes whose details had been shared with them by McLaren’s investigation team had been sanctioned or were currently undergoing disciplinary proceedings.

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) said the full findings of the report were unprecedented and astonishing.

“They strike right at the heart of the integrity and ethics of sport,” Paralympic sport’s governing body said in a statement.

Yelena Isinbayeva, the twice Olympic pole vault champion and now a Russian anti-doping official, however, said it was unfair to single out Russia for criticism.

“If we want to clean up world sport, let’s start,” she said. “We don’t need to concentrate on just one country. I think banning clean Russian sportsmen is impractical and unfair.”

The original McLaren report, released in July, revealed widespread state-sponsored doping in Russian sport.

The July report found Moscow had concealed hundreds of positive doping tests in many sports ahead of the Sochi Games and led to a partial ban of Russian athletes competing in the Rio Olympics in August.

Although Russian track and field athletes and weightlifters were banned from competing at Rio, the International Olympic Committee rejected a blanket ban and let international sports federations decide which athletes should be eligible to compete.

The evidence contained in the report can be found at the website: https://www.ipevidencedisclosurepackage.net/

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