Not just Russia: the doping cyclone is about to hit another four nations, whose identity is still unknown, and a total of 45 athletes, 23 of whom have won medals in the last two editions of the Olympic Games, Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012. The IOC has indeed announced another 45 positivity, for a total of 98 out of the 1.243 samples re-analysed so far with the new tests: 30 cases would be linked to the Chinese Olympics, 15 to the English one and in the countries concerned there are exactly four, in 8 different sports.
The news of the new positivity comes the day after the decision of the TAS of reject the appeal of the 68 Russian athletes and to exclude Russia from athletics from the next Rio Games: it is therefore certain that the cases are many more than those found on Russian athletes, and also concern other national teams athletes who are about to participate in the Rio Olympics, starting on August 5th.
Even Russian President Vladimir Putin has intervened in this regard, asking for a commission of inquiry of foreign experts to study the Russian anti-doping system. At the head of this commission would like Vitaly Smirnov, former vice president of the IOC and honorary member of the International Olympic Committee. "The official position of the Russian authorities – the government, the president and all of us – is that there is no and cannot be a place for doping in sport", these were Putin's words to government ministers.
Secondo the president of the IOC, Thomas Bach, “These new analyzes bear witness once again to the Olympic Committee's will to fight against doping. The tests were done with the help of the latest scientific methods and using a shared information process involving the World Anti-Doping Agency and International Federations. And it doesn't end there. A third and fourth series of new analyzes will take place during and after the Rio de Janeiro Games”.
