Anti-doping officials from at least 10 nations are expected to ask that Russia be considered ineligible to compete in the 2016 Olympics. Its track and field team has already been barred.
From the New York Times:
The antidoping officials and athletes were expected to pressure Olympic leaders on the matter as soon as Monday — less than three weeks before the opening ceremony in Rio. They were waiting for the results of an investigation into claims published in The Times of a state-sponsored doping program conducted by Russian officials at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
Grigory Rodchenkov, Russia’s former antidoping lab director, told The Times in May that he followed government orders to cover up the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs by dozens of Russian Olympians at the Sochi Games. At least 15 of them won medals, he said.
Officials expect the investigation to confirm Rodchenkov’s account. So much so that Joseph de Pencier, the chief executive of the Institute of National Anti-Doping Organizations, wrote to the trade group’s members on Friday encouraging them to sign on to this “‘watershed moment’ in clean sport.”
One cannot know in advance how Russian officials would respond to such a request. But given that Russia has already called allegations of a state-run doping program a Western conspiracy; that the United States, so often seen as meddling in Russia’s affairs, is among the nations making the request; and that Putin called runner Yuliya Stepanova “Judas” after she blew the whistle on a widespread doping program back in 2014, one could imagine that they would not take it well.
