The International Paralympic Committee released a statement responding to the second McLaren Report, calling its findings of state-sponsored doping in Russia “unprecedented and astonishing.”
The second McLaren Report was published today by WADA, backing up claims in the first report that Russian athletes had been benefiting from a massive systematic program to cover up doping and adding further allegations. The second report suggests more than 1000 Russian athletes were beneficiaries of the program, and that Russia had been involved in covering up positive doping tests since at least the 2012 London Summer Olympics and beyond the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. The system included a method of swapping out samples of high-profile athletes to ensure no positive tests, along with tampering with samples to throw off urine analysis.
The IPC officially suspended the Russian Paralympic Committee in August, on the heels of the first McLaren Report. That suspension kept all Russian Paralympic athletes out of the 2016 Rio Paralympics. There were reports that Russian Olympic athletes would serve the same suspension, but after much legal back-and-forth between the IOC, WADA, individual sport federations and the Court of Arbitration for Sport, only certain Russian athletes were banned.
The full IPC statement on the second McLaren Report is below:
The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) would like to place on record our thanks and appreciation to Professor McLaren and his investigation team for completing their mandate.
The full findings of the report are unprecedented and astonishing. They strike right at the heart of the integrity and ethics of sport.
We wholeheartedly agree with Professor McLaren that the best course of action is to work together to fix the broken and compromised anti-doping system in Russia.
The recently appointed IPC Taskforce looks forward to working closely with our member the Russian Paralympic Committee (RPC) to do just that.
The IPC suspended the RPC on 7 August 2016 due to its inability to fulfil its IPC membership obligations, in particular its obligation to comply with the World Anti-Doping Code (to which it is a signatory) and the IPC Anti-Doping Code. Further details can be found at the IPC’s website.
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