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weazel
11-10-2015, 12:23 PM
A stunning report this week has rocked the athletics world with detailed allegations of a state-sponsored doping program in Russia.

The findings of the independent report, commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), has raised the possibility of Russian track and field athletes being banned from the 2016 Olympics.

Russia's anti-doping official initially denounced the report as "unprofessional, illogical and declarative," but some of its evidence has already been passed on to the international crime-fighting organization Interpol for further investigation. And on Tuesday, WADA said it has suspended the Moscow-based laboratory that is supposed to analyze the urine and blood samples of Russia's athletes.

Speaking again Tuesday, the head of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency acknowledged there is a problem but insisted his country is moving forward to address it. Nikita Kamaev said the report -- which was especially critical of a lab that, he said, is independent from his agency -- provided clarity but no real news to his organization.

Here are just five of the most striking allegations contained in that report:

Secret police inside the anti-doping laboratory
Russia should be banned from athletics, says report
8 photos:
Highlighting the extent of Russian state involvement in the efforts to dodge anti-doping rules alleged by the report, the authors describe cases where agents of the FSB, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, visited and even posed as staff at a key laboratory.

FSB agents regularly visited the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory, and staff members suspected their phones were tapped and parts of the facility were bugged, according to the report.

In Sochi, the resort where Russia held the Winter Olympics last year, one lab worker cited by the authors reported a high-degree of intrusion. "We had some guys pretending to be engineers in the lab but actually they were from the federal security service," the staff member said.

Employees' fears of surveillance by authorities "affect the impartiality, judgment and integrity of the laboratory," the report said.

The report paints a disturbing portrait of the Moscow laboratory, which it suggests "has been involved in a widespread cover-up of positive doping tests."

In one of the most spectacular examples, it details the "intentional and malicious destruction" of 1,417 test samples at the lab that a WADA team had specifically requested be kept. The director of the lab, Grigory Rodchenkov, ordered that the samples be thrown out just days before the WADA team arrived for an inspection in December, according to the report.

He apparently told the team that he decided to "do some clean up to prepare for WADA's visit." He later said he misunderstood the instructions he received from WADA about the samples, a claim the report's authors said they don't find credible.

Read much more: http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/10/sport/russia-doping-report-shocking-things/index.html

BigDaddyBronco
11-10-2015, 12:30 PM
In Soviet Russia, one does not dope blood, blood gets added to dope....

chazoe60
11-10-2015, 12:56 PM
This can't actually be a surprise to anyone, can it?

BroncoJoe
11-10-2015, 01:13 PM
Russia and dope are synonymous.

Al Wilson 4 Mayor
11-10-2015, 02:30 PM
This can't actually be a surprise to anyone, can it?

Considering what I know about Putin, I'd almost be surprised if it wasn't going on. Russia is essentially one big mafia.

NightTrainLayne
11-10-2015, 03:48 PM
This can't actually be a surprise to anyone, can it?

I know, right? We've known ever since Drago killed Apollo Creed in the boxing ring.