Seventeen national anti-doping agencies have called for Russia to be banned from next year’s Pyeongchang Winter Olympics over “one of the biggest doping scandals in sports history.”
In a statement issued at the end of a two-day meeting in Denver, Colorado, officials said that the International Olympic Committee had failed to hold Russia accountable, despite evidence of widespread state-sponsored doping over a wide array of sports.
Russian track and field athletes were barred from last year’s Rio Olympics and from the World Championships in Athletics in London last month.
However, the committee declined to issue a blanket ban of Russia from the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
Officials at this week’s meeting, including representatives of anti-doping organizations from the US, France, Germany and Britain, insisted that the committee’s lack of action on Russia “imperils clean athletes and the future of the Olympic movement.”
“A country’s sport leaders and organizations should not be given credentials to the Olympics when they intentionally violate the rules and rob clean athletes. This is especially unfair when athletes are punished when they violate the rules,” the statement said.
It added that they remain committed to providing criteria for individual Russian athletes to compete as neutrals if they have been subject to “robust anti-doping protocols.”
“The failure to expeditiously investigate individual Russian athlete doping poses a clear and present danger for clean athletes worldwide and at the 2018 Winter Games,” the group said.
“We have serious doubts that the 2018 Games will be clean due to the incomplete investigation of massive evidence of individual doping by Russians athletes at the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games and given the inadequate testing evidence of Russian athletes over the past four years,” it added.
With five months remaining before the Pyeongchang Games begin on Feb. 9, there is no time for delay, the group said.
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