Pressure increases on IOC to ban Russia from Rio Olympics following WADA report into state-sponsored doping
IT’S the 10cm ‘mouse hole’ that has shattered the integrity of world sport and has exposed Russia’s drug rats responsible for the greatest doping scandal in history.
IT’S the 10cm ‘mouse hole’ that has shattered the integrity of world sport and has exposed Russia’s drug rats responsible for the greatest doping scandal in history.
The perfectly cylindrical hole inside the tiled and supposedly secure Sochi laboratory is where the ‘dirty’ urine samples of Russian athletes were passed through by secret FSB agents dressed as sewer engineers.
FSB agents, the current version of the Soviet Union’s KGB, would dispose of the dirty urine and replace it with a clean sample taken from the freezer next door, the lids and seals secured back into place, before returning it back through the hole for testing the next morning.
Reading like a Cold War thriller, the mind-blowing level of deciept, corruption and systematic abuse is detailed in a damning 100-page WADA (World Anti-Doping Authority) report which could result in Russia being banned from the 2016 Rio Olympics, possibly as early as Wednesday morning.
Currently in Italy, vice president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) president John Coates, is a key figure in the decision to kick Russia out of the games in Rio, which is just 16-days away.
The investigation confirmed the state-sanctioned scheme run out of the anti-doping lab in Moscow, included 28 summer and winter sports, from athletics to snowboarding and table tennis. It lasted four years and involved at least 312 positive tests that went unreported under the watch of the country’s sporting ministry.
Russia’s sports ministry, supported by the security service FSB, the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) and the Center of Sports Preparation of National Teams of Russia (CSP), made sure positive urine samples disappeared from late 2011 to 2015 to improve the country’s international sporting performance.
Richard McLaren, who wrote the report for WADA, called this the “Disappearing Positive Methodology”.
All positive samples at the Moscow lab were sent to the deputy minister for sport, Yuri Nagornykh, who according to the New York Times, had been appointed by then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
The report was ordered after former Moscow and Sochi anti-doping laboratory boss Grigory Rodchenkov claimed he colluded with Russian security agents to replace urine samples that would’ve failed drug tests with clean samples.
The investigation also analysed the vast array of how athletes consumed banned steroids mixed with whisky for men while women washed down anabolic steroids metenlone, oral turinabol and oxandrolone with a glass of vermouth.
Samples were also doctored by agents with the additions of table salt or distilled water.
Under pressure from WADA to ban Russia from Rio, IOC president Thomas Bach said the investigation revealed “a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sport and on the Olympic Games.’’
“Therefore the IOC will not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organisation implicated,’’ Bach said.
Not since the back-to-back boycotts of the United States in 1980 and the then Soviet Union in 1984, have the Olympics been without one of it’s superpowers like Russia.
Russia traditionally has one of the biggest teams at the Olympics. They finished fourth on the medal table in London with a total of 82 medals, including 24 gold.
Russia’s track and field team have already been barred from competing at Rio.
United States ANTI-Doping Agency chief Travis Tygrat joined with Canada in declaring to BBC Sport that Russia as a whole should be rubbed out of the upcoming Olympics.
“Our position has been clear for months. In the event that the report showed the state involvement in corrupting the Olympic Games and running a doping program they have no business being around the Olympics.”
In Russia, Putin’s claims that the report was the testimony of only one man were shot down by US Olympic champion Michael Johnson.
“As usual Putin and Russian say they’re very unfairly targeted and did nothing wrong. Deny, deny, deny!.”
Originally published as Pressure increases on IOC to ban Russia from Rio Olympics following WADA report into state-sponsored doping