Beijing Olympics 2022

World Anti-Doping Agency says Olympic committee should consider banning all Russian athletes in Rio

Russia's Yelena Isinbayeva fails to clear the bar in the women's pole vault final during the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium August 6, 2012.
Mark Blinch | Reuters

The World Anti-Doping Agency's executive board wants the IOC to ban all Russian teams from the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

WADA issued a seven-point list of requests after it published a report which confirmed claims of state-backed Russian cheating at the Sochi Olympics and beyond. WADA also wants Russian government officials to be denied access to international competitions, including the upcoming Olympics.

The anti-doping watchdog also calls on world governing bodies of sports implicated in the inquiry report to consider action against Russian national bodies.

Reuters reported that officials named in the report will be temporarily suspended, but President Vladimir Putin has asked WADA for more information.

The WADA response is a further signal Russia could be facing Olympic expulsion when the 15-member IOC executive board discusses the crisis on Tuesday. ADA's president, Craig Reedie, is also an IOC vice president who will take part in the scheduled conference call requested by IOC President Thomas Bach.

Earlier, an investigator looking into Russian doping found the country's state-directed cheating program resulted in at least 312 falsified results and lasted from 2011 through at least last year's world swimming championships.

The investigator, Richard McLaren, dubbed Russia's program the "disappearing positive methodology."

McLaren said allegations made by Moscow's former anti-doping lab director about sample switching at the Sochi Olympics went much as described in a New York Times story in May. That program involved dark-of-night switching of dirty samples with clean ones; it prevented Russian athletes from testing positive.

But McLaren, whose report went public Monday, said Russia's cheating also included the 2013 track world championships in Moscow and the 2015 swimming world championships in Kazan.

Russia's deputy minister of sports would direct lab workers which positive samples to send through and which to hold back.