2016 Rio Olympics: Russia’s Status Hangs By Thread As IOC Considers Ban

Rio de Janeiro: The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) called for all Russian competitors and officials to be banned from the Rio Olympics and other international sport after an investigation found rampant state-run doping at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games and other events.

A probe by Canadian law professor Richard for McLaren WADA found the FSB secret service helped “the state-dictated failsafe system” carried out by the sports ministry and covering 30 sports.

International Olympic Committee members will hold emergency talks on Tuesday to decide provisional sanctions over what IOC president Thomas Bach called “a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sports and on the Olympic Games.”

WADA’s executive committee said the IOC and the International Paralympics Committee should “decline entries, for Rio 2016, of all athletes submitted by the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) and the Russian Paralympic Committee.”

It also called for Russian officials implicated in the scandal to be sacked and for “Russian government officials to be denied access to international competitions, including Rio 2016.”

McLaren said the cover up started in 2010 after Russia’s “abysmal” results at the Vancouver Winter Olympics and continued until 2015 after the Sochi Games. It included the 2013 World Athletics Championships in Moscow and 2013 World University Games in Kazan.

President Vladimir Putin made the Sochi Games a showcase event and spent more than $50 billion staging the Games.

Russia, which strongly denies any state involvement in doping, is already banned from international athletics by world governing body IAAF because of doping exposed last year.

There will no be mounting pressure for that to be extended even though Bach and some international federations have called for a way for athletes proved to be clean to compete in Rio.

“The IOC will not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organzation implicated,” Bach said in a statement announcing the IOC conference on Tuesday.

McLaren's report said the sports ministry under Vitaly Mutko organized the subterfuge under which tainted urine samples were replaced and kept away from international observers.