Russian footballers under microscope

– Russian football was the target of fresh doping allegations yesterday with claims of widespread urine sample tampering levelled by Richard McLaren, author of an explosive report into Russian doping.

The Canadian lawyer said he had evidence indicating that positive tests taken from Russian players were swopped with clean samples.

McLaren said the World Anti-Doping Agency had seized 155 samples from 2018 World Cup hosts Russia for re-testing, with Fifa kept informed.

According to Wada’s special anti-doping investigator an exchange of emails between high-ranking Russian officials dating back to 2015 detailed the urine sample swop scam.

He said: “We have some information where there’s reference to trying to find a sample which would be suitable possibly for swapping that gives rise to a suspicion that there is a bank of clean samples somewhere, not in the lab, maintained by somebody, and that it’s being used, with respect to footballers.”

McLaren fears this is “the tip of the iceberg”.

“We’d like to know what’s underneath the waterline,” he said.

He says the batch of samples awaiting analysis will reveal one of two things: “Either there’s been tampering with the caps or the contents have been changed.

“Or the contents haven’t been changed but there may be prohibited substances in there.”

Neither Fifa nor the Russian authorities accepted an invitation to respond to allegations which follow last weekend’s report that Russia’s 2014 World Cup squad was under Fifa investigation.

Russian deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko blasted the report as “nonsense” and insisted that there has never been any problem with doping in the Russian game.

And Fifa insisted all players including all of the Russian squad underwent pre-competition and post-match tests in Brazil.

“All of which resulted negative,” a spokesman for football’s governing body said on Sunday.

McLaren’s bombshell report in 2015 uncovered state-sponsored doping in Russia, with the country’s track and field team banned from the 2016 Rio Olympics.

A second report released by McLaren in December highlighted 31 tampered doping samples from footballers. – AFP