These may include sanctions regarding the Rio Olympic Games. Bach has frequently spoken of the fine line between “collective responsibility and individual justice”.
“The right to participate at the games can not be stolen from an athlete, who has duly qualified and has not be found guilty of doping”, said Bruno Grandi, president of gymnastics’ global federation. “Blanket bans have never been and will never be just”, Grandi said.
The samples from pre-selected athletes at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, had positive tests discarded through an elaborate system the report calls Disappearing Positive Methodology (DPM).
In Sochi itself, where global observers were scrutinising the drug tests, positive results could not simply be brushed away, so a system of sample-swapping was put in place with the help of the FSB intelligence service, the report said.
But McLaren, whose report went public Monday, said Russia’s cheating also included the 2013 track world championships in Moscow and the 2015 swimming world championships in Kazan.
It also called for Russian officials implicated in the scandal to be sacked and for “Russian government officials to be denied access to worldwide competitions, including Rio 2016”.
In short, Russia’s deputy minister of sports, who was also part of Russia’s Olympic Committee, would direct workers at Moscow’s anti-doping laboratory of which positive samples to send through and which to hold back.
The FSB is Russia’s federal security service while the CSP is involved in the training of Russian athletes. Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed Nagornykh to his post in 2010. “I was anticipating the worst”, Paul Media, the top anti-doping official in Canada, said.
McLaren said out of 577 positive sample screenings, 312 positive results were held back – or labeled “Save’” by the lab workers – but that was only a “small slice” of the data that could have been examined.
However, Russian track and field athletes have appealed against their ban to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which is due to rule by Thursday.
The World Anti-Doping Agency investigator, Richard McLaren, says scratches on the bottles were noted by a trained expert’s eye and using a microscope.
The ROC explained that only a majority of votes at the IOC Executive Committee could ban Russian Federation from participation in the Olympics.
International Volleyball Federation president Ary Graca says there are no “major issues” with Russian national teams scheduled to compete in Rio de Janeiro next month.
Several athlete and anti-doping groups were gearing up over the weekend to send letters to the International Olympic Committee urging that Russia’s entire delegation be banned from the Rio Games.
There will no be mounting pressure for that to be extended even though Bach and some worldwide federations have called for a way for athletes proved to be clean to compete in Rio.
He said: “The McLaren Report confirms that, at a minimum, RUSADA’s return to compliance can not be considered until all persons from the Russian Ministry of Sport and other Government Departments and Agencies that are implicated by the Report, including RUSADA, are dismissed from their roles”.
