By Canadian Press

Anti-doping officials call for Russian ban in Rio due to scathing doping report

Jul 18, 2016 | 3:25 PM

A scathing report detailing a complex system of widespread, state-sponsored doping in Russia — a scheme that included government officials tampering with hundreds of positive samples — has led the World Anti-Doping Association to call for the country’s outright ban at next month’s Rio Olympics.

An independent inquiry headed by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren alleges a plan to make positive tests in some 30 sports “disappear” was in force in Russia at least from late 2011 to August 2015.

While Monday’s report makes no recommendations for any discipline against Russia, saying that is not its mandate, the WADA executive board called on the International Olympic Committee to ban all Russian teams from Rio. WADA also wants Russian government officials to be denied access to international competitions, including the upcoming Games.

The IOC executive is to meet via conference call Tuesday to make that decision, which president Thomas Bach said could include “provisional measures and sanctions with regard to the Olympic Games Rio 2016.”

He said in a statement that the report showed “a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sport,” and that it “will not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organization implicated.”

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The Russian athletics team is already provisionally banned from the Rio Games based on an earlier WADA investigation, although Russia has launched an appeal.

How the revelations may affect the 2018 FIFA World Cup, which is to be held in Russia, remains to be seen. 

The report backed up the findings of reports from the New York Times and CBS news in the past year on government-aided doping in Russia, based mainly on interviews with the former head of the Moscow lab Grigory Rodchenkov, who is now living in the U.S.

It placed the now-decertified Moscow drug-testing lab at the centre of a system it called Disappearing Positive Methodology, in which lab employees were required to participate.

Urine samples taken at sports events would be referred to the Russian sports ministry where they would be labelled either “save” or “quarantine.” The quarantined samples would go through normal testing and be registered with WADA. The saved ones, most of them showing positive results for banned substances, would be substituted with clean samples.

Of 577 samples, 312 were marked “save.”

The 2014 Winter Games took it to another level. With doping officials from other countries also working in the Sochi lab, Russia involved its security service, the replacement of the Soviet KGB.

The report said athletes pre-selected to take part in a doping program had their samples passed through a hole in a lab wall to agents, who found a way to open the tamper-proof bottles, pour in clean urine taken previously from the same athletes, and pass them back into the lab.

Tampered-with bottles could only be detected with microscopic examination, but McLaren said the same type of bottle could safely be used at the 2016 Games now that doping officials are aware of the tactic.

The report found evidence of doping in 30 sports, led by track and field and weightlifting. Hockey and Paralympic sports were included, although no athletes were named.

It said Russia adopted a win-at-all-costs mandate after a weak performance at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, where it finished 11th with 15 medals, only three gold.

Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko has scoffed at the allegations, saying they are part of an “information” attack on his country. Some in Russia feel they are being unfairly singled out while other countries, including Kenya, are also under suspicion of organized doping.

McLaren, an expert on sports law from Western University, said he was confident that his information was valid even if he would have liked more time to examine evidence and interview witnesses. The report found Rodchenko, whose motives have been questioned by some, to be “a credible and truthful person.”

And he brushed aside a claim from Pat Hickey, head of European Olympic Committees, that the report was compromised because it had been leaked in advance to anti-doping advocates, including Canadian former skier Beckie Scott, who heads WADA’s athletes committee. Hickey said Scott has used information in the report to lead a movement to ban Russia from the Rio Games.

The report says Scott and fellow WADA athletes representative Claudia Bokel of Germany sat in on its interview with Rodchenkov. 

“My concern is that there seems to have been an attempt to agree on an outcome before any evidence has been presented,” Hickey said in a statement released Sunday.  “Such interference and calls ahead of the McLaren Report publication are totally against internationally recognized fair legal process and may have completely undermined the integrity and therefore the credibility of this important report.”

Scott denied seeing the report in advance on a conference call Monday. She said she received a draft statement prepared by doping agencies that she circulated to members of her committee in preparation for a response to the McLaren report.

“To imply somehow that I breached process or confidentiality or anything else is false and actually quite outrageous,” she said.

WADA does not normally make recommendations for discipline when its rules are broken, but prefers to present evidence to the IOC and sports federations for them to decide what should be done.

However, after the report was read out, it issued a seven-point list of requests. It also wants world governing bodies of sports implicated in the inquiry report to consider action against Russian national bodies.

Bill Beacon, The Canadian Press