Federations in Russia facing ban from Rio

NEW YORK — Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, said Wednesday that Russian sports federations could be kept out of the Summer Olympics if new allegations about a state-sponsored cover-up of doping among Russian athletes are proven true.

“We will apply our zero tolerance policy, not only with regard to the athletes but also with regard to everybody implicated and within our reach,” Bach said.

Writing in an op-ed piece in USA Today, he cited the “shocking new dimension in doping” and “unprecedented level of criminality” of which Russia had been accused. Still waiting

Bach declined to say if the Russian Federation as a whole could be kept from competition, indicating that the IOC would wait until the World Anti-Doping Agency had completed an investigation into conduct at the Olympic testing laboratory at the 2014 Sochi Games.

That investigation is seeking to verify the account of Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, Russia’s former longtime anti-doping lab director, who oversaw the Sochi lab. Rodchenkov told The New York Times that during Sochi he worked at the direction of the Russian government, expunging the tainted urine of Russian athletes who were using performance-enhancing drugs. He said that with the help of the Russian intelligence service, he gained access to supposedly tamper-proof drug sample bottles and surreptitiously substituted in athletes’ clean urine.

Bach said the IOC had no control over whether WADA’s investigation would be completed before the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, which start on Aug. 5.

“This is in the hands of WADA,” he said, adding that he urged anyone with further information on the Sochi lab operation and Rodchenkov’s allegations to call an integrity and compliance hotline. Other Games in doubt

Rodchenkov’s account cast suspicion on not just the Russian athletes who competed in Sochi but those who competed at recent Summer Games, namely those in Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012.

According to Rodchenkov, director of the Moscow’s anti-doping lab from 2005 to 2015, Russian athletes were doping in advance of Beijing and London. Before London, he said, he developed a three-drug cocktail of anabolic steroids that helped to speed athletes’ recovery from grueling training regimens. Mixed with liquor, that concoction, he said, drastically decreased the drugs’ detection window, allowing athletes to dope days before competition.

On Tuesday, the IOC announced that it had retested the doping samples of athletes who competed in Beijing, discovering 31 athletes from six sports and 12 countries with suspicious test results that could keep them from the Rio Games. Officials did not specify if Russia was included and said that further retesting of medalists’ samples from the London Games was planned and would be completed before Rio.

Separate of the IOC’s announcement, the Russian Weightlifting Federation announced on Tuesday that four Russian lifters, among them a world-record holder, had been suspended for doping.