IOC decision on Russia to come within seven days

The IOC will decide on Russia's participation at Rio in the next seven days

The IOC will make a decision on whether to enforce a total ban on Russia's athletes at the Rio Olympics within seven days.

The Games' governing body has faced growing calls to exclude the country from Rio following the damning evidence of widespread state-sponsored doping by Russian athletes at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

IOC president Thomas Bach held a conference call with fellow officials on Tuesday to discuss the governing body's next course of action and a statement released after that meeting confirmed disciplinary proceedings have been opened against officials within the Russian Ministry of Sport and others mentioned in the report released on Monday.

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Professor Richard McLaren presents the WADA report on Russia and whether it operated a state-dictated doping system

Russia's track-and-field athletes have already been banned by the IAAF, although the Court of Arbitration for Sport will rule on Thursday whether 68 of those athletes should be allowed to compete in Rio.

In the meantime, the IOC is now seeking legal advice on the possibility of an outright ban of all athletes. 

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"We expect [to have] a decision within seven days on the participation of Russian competitors in Rio," said IOC spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has called for such a ban, but the co-author of the report that led to the IAAF suspension believes the IOC will only enforce an entire ban on the Russian team as a last resort.

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A look at the astonishing figures behind the doping problem in Russian sport

Dick Pound, who was WADA's first president, told BBC radio: "I do get the impression, reading between the lines, that the IOC is for some reason very reluctant to think about the total exclusion of the Russian team.

"There may or may not be clean Russian athletes, but if you look at the McLaren report it is pretty clear it was endemic. 

Former WADA president Dick Pound believes the IOC is reluctant to enforce a total ban

"It was a government-instituted programme and every doping test was scanned to make sure there wasn't a positive - and if it happened to be a Russian athlete who had a positive test, it disappeared and it was replaced by a negative test.

"It is going to be very hard to satisfy anybody that someone in that system who is at a level that gets him or her to an Olympic Games is in fact clean."