Over 1000 Russian athletes involved in doping scandal - McLaren Report
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Updated 09/12/2016 at 19:13 GMT
The release of the McLaren Report has revealed that over 1000 athletes were involved in or benefitted from the Russian doping scandal.
Russia doping
Image credit: Imago
The first part of Richard McLaren’s investigation into Russian state-sponsored doping revealed an unprecedented scandal that led to the country’s athletics team being banned from this summer’s Rio Olympic Games.
And the release of the second part of his report on Friday has unveiled the staggering scale of the crisis stretching back five years.
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WADA investigator: Russia corrupted the London Olympics on unprecedented scale
"We are now able not only to confirm the findings of the first report but also to put them into sharper and clearer focus,” McLaren said. "We are increasing the number of athletes involved, as well as the scope of the conspiracy and cover-up. A cover-up that dates back to at least 2011 and continued after the Sochi Winter Games.
"A cover-up that evolved over the years from uncontrolled chaos to an institutionalised and disciplined medal-winning strategy and conspiracy. A cover-up that operated on an unprecedented scale.”
The report states that the doping scandal operated across 30 sports and impacted on 1000 athletes - making this the biggest doping scandal in the history of sport.
Over 1000 Russian athletes competing in summer, winter and Paralympic sport, can be identified as being involved in or benefitting from manipulations to conceal positive doping tests. Based on the information reported to International Federations through the IP to WADA there are 503 (82%) summer athletes and 92 (18%) winter athletes.
In further revelations contained within the new report, investigators said:
- There was evidence of tampering involving 12 medalists, and four gold medals, from the Sochi Games in 2014.
- Football is among the 30 sports implicated in the scandal.
- Nescafe granules and salt were used to corrupt urine samples.
The report said a urine sample-swapping technique used at Sochi became regular practice at the Moscow laboratory that dealt with elite athletes.
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.
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.
Russia Responds
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Yelena Isinbayeva
Image credit: AFP
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."
With additional reporting from Reuters
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