United States Anti-Doping Agency backs WADA’s call for Russia to be banned
Last Updated: 10/11/15 11:34am
United States Anti-Doping Agency has commended the work of the World Anti-Doping Agency Independent Commission for “exposing a Russian effort to takeover sport through unlawful means”.
On Monday, WADA recommended Russia be suspended from international athletics with less than year to go until the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio amid claims of doping, cover-ups and extortion.
Former WADA president Dick Pound, who led the three-man independent panel, also said five athletes and five coaches should be handed lifetime bans, including 2012 Olympic gold and bronze-medal winners Mariya Savinova-Farnosova and Ekaterina Poistogova.
As well as praising the findings of the commission, USADA called upon the rest of world athletics to "rise up" and protect the integrity of the sport.
"The evidence released demonstrates a shocking level of corruption, and sends a clear message to Russia that they will not be allowed to cheat the world's athletes and escape justice behind a wall of deception and lies," a USADA statement read.
"If Russia has created an organized scheme of state supported doping, then they have no business being allowed to compete on the world stage. The world's athletes deserve better, and all who love clean sport must rise up and confront this threat.
"We will continue to fight on behalf of all clean athletes to ensure that clear and decisive action is taken to sweep out anyone who has been involved with this scheme."
Along with fellow commission members Richard McLaren and Gunter Younger, Pound produced a report more than 300 pages long into their findings of an investigation into allegations of Russian misconduct.
In the report, the commission said the London Olympics were "more or less sabotaged" by allowing Russian athletes to compete when they should have been suspended for doping violations.
It claims number of Russian athletes suspected of doping could have been prevented from competing there had it not been for "the collective and inexplicable laissez-faire policy" adopted by the IAAF and the Russian athletics federation.
The WADA reports says agents from Russia's intelligence service, the FSB, infiltrated anti-doping work at the Sochi Olympics.
It also states "impartiality, judgment and integrity were compromised by the surveillance of the FSB within the laboratory." Staff at the Moscow lab believed their offices were bugged by the FSB
The WADA report says Moscow testing laboratory director Grigory Rodchenko ordered 1,417 doping control samples be destroyed to deny evidence for the inquiry.
He is alleged to have "personally instructed and authorized" the destruction of evidence three days before a WADA audit team arrived in Moscow last December then claimed he had decided to "do some clean up to prepare for WADA's visit."
