Nation/World

World Anti-Doping Agency report details scope of massive Russian scheme

A new report Friday from the international agency that polices drugs in sport put the full scale of the Russian doping scandal into better focus, detailing one of the largest cheating scandals in history and implicating government employees and more than 1,000 Russian athletes who benefited from manipulations to conceal positive doping tests.

The Russian athletes and government officials were involved in an "institutional conspiracy" of an "unprecedented scale," Richard McLaren, a Canadian lawyer and sports ethics expert who led the investigation for the World Anti-Doping Agency, said at a news conference Friday morning in London. The elaborate doping system and associated coverup began in at least 2011, McLaren said, and continued beyond the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014.

"It is impossible to know how deep and how far back the conspiracy goes," McLaren said. "For years, international sports competition has been unknowingly hijacked by the Russians."

The International Olympic Committee will test all samples of all Russian athletes who took part in the 2012 London Olympics following the report, Reuters reported.

"Following Professor (Richard) McLaren's findings, I have also today extended the mandate of the disciplinary commission to test all samples of all Russian athletes having participated in the Olympic Games London 2012," IOC President Thomas Bach told reporters.

While the report could intensify calls for Russia to be barred from the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, McLaren said that decision should be made by the International Olympic Committee and the governing bodies of each sport.

Friday's report confirmed the findings shared in an initial report in July, charging Russian sport and government officials with swapping out the tainted urine samples by athletes with clean samples.

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"These athletes were not acting individually but within an organized infrastructure," he said.

He called the Russian intelligence agents from the FSB – a successor agency to the KGB – "magicians" for being able to crack open tamper-proof bottles and fool doping officials.

"The story of how all the pieces fit together seems like fiction," McLaren said.

[Russia splurges $30 million on Putin's daughter's favorite sport]

The report found that the scheme — which was spurred by Russia's poor showing at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver — included athletes at the 2012 London Summer Games, the 2013 Universiade Games, the world track and field championships in 2013, and the 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Sochi, Russia. Among its specific findings:

— Male DNA was found in the urine samples of two Russian women's ice hockey players, a sign that those samples were tampered with.

— Samples provided by two unnamed athletes who won four gold medals in Sochi showed physiologically impossible salt readings.

— Forty-four bottles containing urine samples from 12 medal-winning athletes had scratches and marks on the inside of the caps, indicating tampering. WADA says this was determined by an unnamed "world recognized expert in firearms and toolmarks examinations," who found that the nominally tamper-proof caps could be removed and then placed back on the bottles without leaving marks visible to the untrained eye.

— Six winners of 21 Paralympic medals from Sochi were found to have tampered urine samples

McLaren found that Russia's Ministry of Sport helped cover up positive doping results in more than 30 sports in all. Friday's report did not name the vast majority of the offenders. Their names were instead redacted, but McLaren said their identities have been shared with the governing bodies of each sport, which have the authority to mete out punishments. He said information on 600 summer and 95 winter sports athletes have been forwarded to the international federations of each sport.

Even as WADA tried to better police doping and curtail cheats, for years Russia was able to change its practices and stay one step ahead, he said.

"Our investigation has revealed that for every action by WADA, from Russia there was a reaction," McLaren said.

WADA and IOC officials have been closely scrutinizing recent Olympic results and retesting athletes' doping samples. More than three dozen medals could be stripped from top finishers at the 2008 Beijing Games, the 2012 London Olympics and the Sochi Games in 2014.

Friday's revelations encompassed just the second half of McLaren's investigation. Initial findings were released July 18, barely two weeks before the start of the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. McLaren then found "beyond a reasonable doubt" that the Russian government ran a widespread doping system and recommended barring all Russian athletes from competing at the Rio Games.

The International Olympic Committee opted against an outright ban of the country, leaving it up to the individual sports federations to rule on allowing Russian athletes to compete. Opinions varied from sport to sport on how to deal with McLaren's initial findings, and while more than 100 athletes were forbidden from competing, nearly 300 Russians still participated in the Rio Games.

"I find it difficult to understand why we were not on the same team," McLaren said Friday. "We should all be working together to end doping in sports. My investigation has gone a long way to bring this dark secret out into the open. Now we must move together and find solutions."

While acknowledging room for improvement, Russian sport and government officials said they were being unfairly targeted and challenged many of the conclusions of McLaren's initial report. Friday's follow-up report laid bare the extent of the evidence against Russia, including forensic analysis of past doping samples and emails, documents and other forms of communication. As part of the investigation, McLaren compiled 1,166 documents and pieces of evidence and has made them available on a searchable website.

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Friday's report marked the culmination of high-profile investigation, though probably not the controversy that cast a dark cloud over the run-up to the Rio Olympics. A whistleblower from Russia's anti-doping agency first approached WADA six years ago with evidence of a state-run doping program. More than five years passed before WADA initiated an investigation, after a German television network aired a documentary based on the whistle-blower's allegations.

McLaren was tabbed as a special investigator in May following a New York Times report in which Grigory Rodchenkov, a former director of Russia's anti-doping laboratory in Moscow, outlined Russia's elaborate doping scheme at the 2014 Sochi Games.

Rodchenkov, who cooperated with WADA investigators, told the Times he tampered with the urine samples of at least 15 medalists from the Sochi Games.

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