More than 1,000 Russian athletes implicated in state-sponsored doping

More than 1,000 Russians – including Olympic medallists – benefited from a state-sponsored doping programme between 2011 and 2015, a report claims.

At least 30 sports including football covered up samples, the report says.

“It was a cover-up that evolved from uncontrolled chaos to an institutionalised and disciplined medal-winning conspiracy,” says the report’s author, Richard McLaren.

Lawyer McLaren said London 2012 was “corrupted on an unprecedented scale”.

The report also implicates medallists at the 2013 World Championships in Moscow and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

According to the report, salt and coffee were used to manipulate Russian samples.

The report added that the system was refined over the course of the 2012 Olympics, 2013 Worlds and the Winter Olympics to protect likely Russian medal winners.

Russia won 72 medals at the London Games, 21 of which were gold and 33 medals at Sochi, 13 of which were gold.

“The desire to win medals superseded their collective moral and ethical compass and Olympic values of fair play,” McLaren wrote.

He said international sports competitions had been “unknowingly hijacked by the Russians” and sports fans have been “deceived” for years.

“It is time that stops,” he added.

Russian MP Dmitry Svishchev, who is also the head of Russia’s Curling Federation, was quoted by Ria Novosti news agency as saying: “This is what we expected. There’s nothing new, only empty allegations against all of us. If you are Russian, you’ll get accused of every single sin.”

When asked for a reaction to those comments, McLaren said: “I would say read the report. Its findings are not challengeable. He is reacting in a vacuum because he has not read the report.”

McLaren’s second report added depth and supporting evidence to the initial findings published in July – that Russia operated a state-sponsored doping programme.

That first report was met with denials from Russia and calls for more proof from the International Olympic Committee.

The new report also found:

• At the Sochi Games, two Russian female ice hockey players had male urine samples
• A total of 15 Russian medal winners at London 2012 were implicated [10 medals have since been taken away]
• The samples of 12 medal-winning athletes at Sochi 2014 had evidence of tampering
• Six winners of 21 Paralympic medals at Sochi had their samples tampered with
• Emails were found asking for instructions from the Russian Ministry of Sport on what to do with a positive sample – save or quarantine?
• Spreadsheets were found containing lists of athletes whose samples had been saved
• A clean urine bank was kept in Moscow
• A cocktail of drugs with a very short detection window known as the “Duchess” was developed to assist athletes in evading doping
• Salt and instant coffee granules were added to clean urine samples to match the appearance of the positive samples
• Three samples at Sochi had salt readings that were physiologically impossible

Investigators have published a searchable database of all the non-confidential evidence they have gathered here.

Urine sample swapping common practice

The first McLaren report explained how disappearing positive drug tests were secreted through “mouse holes” drilled by spies.

That was based on information received from Dr Grigory Rodchenkov, a former director of the anti-doping laboratory at Sochi 2014.

He had said the Russian secret service developed ways of opening sample bottles and replacing their contents without intervention being detected.

The new report claims to have compiled clear details on exactly how the sample bottles in Sochi were tampered with.

Investigators used a tool which matched the description of one used by the FSB (Russian Federal Security Service), which leaves tiny marks and scratches on the inside of the cap.

An expert was given 13 bottles, one of which had not been tampered with, which he immediately spotted.

In cases of alleged sample swapping, investigators found there were scratches and marks on the inside of the cap, along with DNA inconsistencies. BBC News