Written by BBC’s Sports Staff at BBC Sports.com
Russia must wait to learn if it can send a team to next month’s Olympics after calls for it to be barred from the Rio Games for operating a four-year, state-sponsored doping programme.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it will “explore the legal options” before deciding whether to implement “a collective ban” on all Russian competitors for the global showpiece, which starts on 5 August.
In the meantime, the IOC says it plans to re-test all Russians who competed at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
This follows the findings of the McLaren report, which said urine samples of Russian competitors were manipulated across the “vast majority” of summer and winter Olympic sports from late 2011 to August 2015.
The IOC also said it will:
- Not organise or back any sports events or meetings in Russia, including the European Games, scheduled for June 2019;
- Start disciplinary action against Russian officials named in the report compiled by Dr Richard McLaren;
- Ban Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko from the Rio Games;
- Urge McLaren to continue his work and name individual Russian cheats;
- Encourage individual sports federations to look for any Russian infringements of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) code.
Calls for a blanket ban on Russia – from both the Olympics and Paralympics – followed the publication of the McLaren report on Monday.
IOC president Thomas Bach said the findings of the report were a “shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sport and on the Olympic Games”.
Wada president Sir Craig Reedie described the “scope and scale” of the findings as a “real horror story”.
He said his organisation wanted the IOC to “decline entries, for Rio 2016, of all athletes” submitted by the Russian Olympic and Paralympic committees.
Mutko, meanwhile, has denied that the government directed the doping programme in Russia.
He also told the Interfax news agency he was hoping for a “reasonable” decision from the IOC on Russia’s participation in Rio.
To continue reading this article, click here.
