In Russia the doping of athletes was favored by the state and did not concern only athletics: the entire delegation of the country should therefore be excluded from the Rio 2016 Olympics. The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) writes this in its latest report, underlining that the Russian one was a "system of falsification" of tests ordered and covered by the political authorities.
The independent commission headed by Richard McLaren claims that the organization set up by the Moscow Ministry of Sports began operating with the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010, it involved “basically all sports” and also affected London 2012, the World Athletics Championships in Moscow in 2013 and those of swimming a Win in 2015.
Furthermore, the laboratory of Sochi he worked to allow doped Russian athletes to compete in the 2014 Winter Games. The manipulation of doping tests in Russian sport also involved the laboratory in the Russian capital in at least 312 cases, according to the Wada report.
“The McLaren report – explains the spokesman of Wada, Ben Nichols – highlighted in Russia the most deliberate and shocking abuse of power ever seen in the history of sport. The use of doping in 30 sport it means that the presumption of innocence can no longer exist”.
Between 2010 and 2015, according to the report, at the top of the anti-doping test forgery system for Russian athletes was the Moscow Ministry of Sport, with which the security services (the FSB, ex KGB) and the national training center of Team Russia.
The report therefore confirms the allegations of the former director of the Russian anti-doping laboratory, Grigory Rodchenkov, who fled to the US after the deaths of two colleagues in unclear circumstances. McLaren guarantees that the main conclusions of his report "are supported by evidence" and spoke of the existence of a "method of disappearing positive cases".
The Russian president Vladimir Putin, quoted by the Interfax agency, assured that all public officials accused in the Wada report will be temporarily suspended from their positions until the end of the investigation.
But since Kremlin a vitriolic note also arrived: “We are watching a dangerous repetition of the interference of politics in sport. The forms of these interferences have changed but they aim at the same objective: to make sport an instrument of geopolitical pressure, to give a negative image of countries and peoples”.
As for the International Olympic Committee, is ready for "the harshest sanctions" against individuals and bodies involved in Russia's doping scandal, President Tomas Bach said.
Russia had already been suspended from all international competitions Athletics – including the Rio Olympics – after a dossier published in November revealed an organized doping system in the sport.
