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Athletics

Russian state backed drugs cheats, says report

The ingenious methods deployed to confuse doping investigators were laid out in a report on Friday into allegations of state sponsored cheating in Russia.

Richard McLaren's report says scores of Russian athletes had taken drugs before the London 2012 Olympics.
Richard McLaren's report says scores of Russian athletes had taken drugs before the London 2012 Olympics.
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Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of Moscow's main anti-doping laboratory, used salt, coffee, water and sediment to cover up the manipulation of samples, according to the inquiry headed by the Canadian law professor Richard McLaren.

Rodchenkov, who is in hiding in the United States, had to resort to desperate measures because of the constant risk of being found out by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), the report said.

As well as laboratory director, Rodchenkov was an FSB intelligence agent and, according to the report, part of his job was to report on Wada activities to the secret services.

Hours after the publication of the inquiry, the Russian sports ministry issued a statement denying the role of the state in doping and the concealment of adverse results.

McLaren's second report said Russian officials started to panic about the possibilities of being caught in the prelude to the 2012 London Olympics which McLaren said was corrupted on an unprecedented scale.

It indicated several times that the then sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, who is now a deputy prime minister, was implicated in the events.

"After Dr Rodchenkov's return, various steps and actions were initiated by the (ministry of sport) under the leadership and knowledge of both minister Mutko and deputy minister Iouri Nagornykh, with direct involvement of the Federal Security Service (FSB)," said the report.

Wada stepped up testing of Russian athletes from May to July 2012 and 67 samples from 56 athletes were sent to the Moscow laboratory.

McLaren said positive tests were reported to the sports ministry and false results sent to the Wada computerised system.

Rodchenkov realised there could be trouble when Wada requested that samples meant to be stored in Moscow be sent to the Lausanne laboratory for new tests.

He knew that 10 of the samples on the list were dirty but had only clean urine for eight of the athletes involved. He also added salt and coffee to put off Wada experts.

"He (Rodchenkov) altered the clean A samples either by diluting with water, adding salt, sediment or Nescafe granules when needed to match the specific gravity and appearance of the dirty B samples," McLaren said.

The report named Anastasiya Kapachinskaya, who won a silver in the Russian 4x400m women's relay team in Beijing in 2008, and Darya Pishchalnikova, who took silver in the women's discus in London, as two of the athletes involved.

Rodchenkov said that Pishchalnikova "was considered untouchable throughout her career, meaning that none of her samples would or could be reported positive."

But he had no clean urine to replace her sample. "So he substituted her dirty urine with her own less dirty urine from a prior sample." But steroids were found in both tests conducted outside Russia.

Some 67 Russian samples at the Lausanne laboratory were mysteriously destroyed in March 2013. "The destruction was alleged to have been an accidental error due to an administrative misunderstanding within the laboratory," said the report.

Rodchenkov and other whistleblowers said they were certain there would have been more failed tests had the samples been saved and analysed again.

"This saga was an early demonstration of the process where every Wada action triggered a Russian cover up reaction," said the report.

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