Russia faces BAN from Rio olympics over STATE-SPONSORED doping scandal!

Russia could be banned from competing at the Rio Olympics after a damning report lifted the lid on a state-sponsored doping cover-up involving Vladimir Putin’s right-hand man, the Russian intelligence services and top sports officials.

The International Olympic Committee’s executive board will discuss the results of the report by the Canadian law professor Richard McLaren in a teleconference on Tuesday.

McLaren said he had found convincing evidence that the Russian ministry of sport hid hundreds of positive drugs tests among its athletes in the run-up to the London 2012 Olympics, as well as during the World Athletics Championships in Moscow in 2013 and the Winter Olympics in Sochi a year later.

Among the options on the table for the IOC will be a complete ban on Russia from the Rio Olympics, which begin next month, as well as a proposal to allow individual sporting federations to decide whether to implement separate bans – which, given the timescale, will be almost impossible to push through.

Last month Russia’s track and field stars were banned from Rio by the International Association of Athletics Federations, with only those who had trained outside the Russian system being allowed to compete under a neutral flag.

Thomas Bach, the IOC president, called the findings of McLaren’s report “a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sports and on the Olympic Games”.

The central finding of McLaren’s investigation was that Russian athletes “from the vast majority of summer and winter Olympic sports” had benefited from a system to make positive results disappear, which had become state policy after the country’s poor medal count during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The Kremlin said the report was based on a whistleblower with a “scandalous reputation”.

Bach has come under increasing pressure from athletes’ groups as well as the World Anti-Doping Agency, which wants Russia banned. According to McLaren, a key figure was the deputy minister of sport, Yuri Nagornykh, appointed by Putin, who “decided who would benefit from a cover-up and who would not be protected”.

McLaren also confirmed allegations that steroid-tainted urine samples were swapped for clean ones in Sochi with the help of Russia’s intelligence and anti-doping officials. The tainted samples were passed through a “mouse hole” from inside the secure perimeter of the Sochi lab into an adjacent operations room, where they were allegedly switched.

(Disclaimer: Not my content - taken from an article at the Guardian - Just a very interesting story that I wanted to share - https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jul/18/russia-banned-rio-olympics-state-sponsored-doping)

Also see: Andy Bull on why 'Banning Russia from Rio is imperative to save Olympics’ credibility'...

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jul/18/banning-russia-doping-rio-olympics-mclaren-report