The Canadian lawyer who accused Russia of operating a state-run doping programme is facing “a deluge of requests” for information on individual athletes implicated in his investigation.
Richard McLaren, who was commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, issued a report that accused Russia’s sports ministry of overseeing doping among Olympic athletes in more than two dozen summer and winter sports.
The International Olympic Committee rejected calls by Wada and other anti-doping bodies to ban Russia’s entire Olympic team from the Rio de Janeiro Games. Instead, the IOC asked individual sports federations to determine which Russian athletes would be cleared to compete.
“My office has been inundated with requests for information on individual athletes,” McLaren said in a statement released from London, Ontario.
“The [IOC] decision has resulted in a deluge of requests to provide information to the IFs [international federations]; Russian national federations; the Russian Olympic Committee; the Russian Paralympic Committee and individual Russian athletes.”
McLaren said that he has provided information to Wada that names athletes whose urine samples were part of a state-run cover-up. “Wada in turn has shared this information with IFs.”
More than 100 Russian athletes have been barred from the Games so far – including the athletics team banned by the International Association of Athletics Federations, and more than 30 athletes excluded by other federations since the release of McLaren’s report. Russia’s entire weightlifting team was kicked out on Friday.
Vitaly Mutko, the Russian sports minister, said yesterday that weightlifting’s blanket ban of Russia would be subject to an appeal at the court of arbitration for sport. “Unfortunately, the federation took collective responsibility again and suspended the whole team,” Mutko told Match TV. “What we have now, the Cas is open 24 hours a day, I think that today or tomorrow we will support athletes, including by an appeal.”
Mutko expects Russia to be present in all but five sports at the Games – they did not qualify in basketball, football, hockey and rugby – but with a team heavily reduced from the 387 initially announced. “At the moment I can tell you we will be present in 29 of the 34 sports, with 266 athletes,” he said.
The IOC has said that any Russian athlete with a prior sanction for doping would not be allowed into the Games. Anyone implicated in McLaren’s report would also be excluded, the IOC said.
McLaren said his mandate had been extended to finish the investigation and “identify any further athletes that might have benefited from such manipulation to conceal positive doping tests”.
Until now, he said, the focus of his investigation was to look into evidence of a “state-dictated programme which used the Moscow and Sochi laboratories to cover up doping”.
“It has not been to establish anti-doping rule violation cases against individual athletes,” McLaren said, adding that it was not his job to process doping cases against individual athletes.
“I have, however, received a considerable amount of reliable evidence, which clearly implicates individual athletes in the state-dictated programme described in the report. That evidence includes documents supported by the testimony of confidential witnesses and in some cases additional forensic and analytical evidence from the examination of sample bottles and their contents.”
McLaren said his ongoing investigation includes developing evidence which may be used in the future to sanction individual athletes. “At this stage, I will not release any of the specific information I currently have concerning any athletes,” he said. “To do so would compromise the ongoing investigation.”
