NEW REPORT WIDENS SCOPE OF RUSSIAN DOPING CONSPIRACY.
EVIDENCE OF ‘INSTITUTIONAL CONSPIRACY’ IN RUSSIAN TAMPERING OF URINE SAMPLES
Richard McLaren, the Canadian law professor tasked by the World Anti- Doping Agency to investigate allegations of Russian doping, has released his second report on the subject, which he says confirms “an institutional conspiracy” and a “coverup that operated on an unprecedented scale” dating to at least 2011.
McLaren’s first report was published in July in the run-up to the Rio Olympics; it said there was conclusive and incontrovertible evidence of widespread doping within Russian sport that included a sample- swapping scheme employed at the drug lab used at the Sochi 2014 Games and a system — “the disappearing positive methodology” — in which positive drug tests where simply recorded as negative in the international PED-reporting database.
But the first report was put t ogether in j ust under t wo months, which McLaren said at the time did not leave enough time to investigate allegations about specific athletes in detail. Most of the conclusions were sweeping and broad, which the Russians complained implicated everyone and no one at the same time.
With the report released Friday morning in London, McLaren says he has provided the evidence he could not the first time around.
Among his new findings:
❚ 695 Russian athletes and 19 foreign athletes were identified as part of the manipulations to conceal potentially positive doping control tests. “That manipulation came in various forms and was carried out by different parts of the sports infrastructure within Russia,” the report says. None of the athletes was identified by name in the report or accompanying evidence. They were identified by a numeric code.
❚ The investigation analyzed 44 urine- sample bottles from Sochi Olympic athletes known to have been “protected” — the term McLaren used for Russian athletes who were on a list that ensured their positive tests would be altered in the drug database — and found the bottles “showed evidence of scratches and marks that indicated tampering.” Urine tests always contain two separate samples. When the corresponding sample bottles were analyzed for salt concentration, six samples contained more salt than physiologically possible in the urine of a healthy human and two samples contained salt concentration below what is physiologically possible in the urine of a healthy human. Salt is commonly added to urine as a way to neutralize the appearance of drugs in the body. The results, the report says, “establish that the urine contents had been swapped or tampered with.”
❚ Those 44 samples included 12 from medal- winning athletes at Sochi whose urine bottles, under forensic examination, showed signs of tampering. McLaren’s first report said the Russians had developed a system to open tamper- proof bottles and replace the caps after clean urine had been substituted. Agents of the Russian security service were involved, he said. The specific method remains unknown.
❚ Three of those 12 medal winners also had “physiologically impossible” salt readings when their samples were re-evaluated.
❚ DNA analysis of samples from female hockey players who were initially not part of the protected athletes were conducted. That investigation, the report says, revealed male DNA in two female hockey player urine samples. McLaren says the presence of male DNA “provides incontrovertible confirmation that the original urine samples had been tampered with and swapped.”
“It is impossible to know how deep and how far back, the conspiracy goes,” McLaren told a news conference at a London hotel Friday morning. He said the story of Russian doping “seems like fiction,” but stressed that it is not. He said that, given “the level of fear among direct witnesses” in Russian sport, the investigation sought forensic evidence and laboratory evidence to establish its conclusions, and to corroborate the allegations initially raised by Grigory Rodchenkov, who directed Russia’s doping scheme and later was the key source in U. S. media reports on the subject. He also co- operated with the McLaren investigation.
“The immutable forensic and scientific facts support and corroborate the interviews of Dr. Rodchenkov by the ( investigators),” the report says.
The Russian response has been to call Rodchenkov an unreliable fabulist, but McLaren says “the coupling of the immutable facts” and the fact he faced deportation from the United States if he provided false evidence “makes Dr. Rodchenkov a reliable witness within the context of the mandate of the investigation.”
McLaren says the evidence includes more than 1,100 pages of photos, forensic reports, testing analysis, schedules, emails and working documents. All have been uploaded on a searchable database on the WADA website, although athletes’ names have been redacted and most of the correspondence is in Russian. But among the documents are a list of athletes who received a drug cocktail developed by Rodchenkov, a Sochi “medals by day” chart that included protected athletes and showed their progress through the Games, and a list from 2014 of dirty urine samples the Russians knew had to be swapped after WADA had ordered them seized from a Moscow laboratory under investigation at the time.
The thousands of pages of evidence add to the documentary record of the several WADA- initiated probes into Russian sports that now include an independent commission and McLaren’s monthslong investigation. It all started when a German TV documentary, aired in 2015, alleged widespread doping and included testimony from Russian athletes.
Asked Friday what he would say to allegations that the work of the WADA probe was biased against Russia from the outset, McLaren responded: “You evaluate the evidence and you tell me if I’m wrong.”
Russian officials have said Friday morning that the second report contains nothing but baseless allegations.