Anti-Doping Commission Finds Russia Engaged in State-Sponsored Doping

The Wall Street Journal has the full report:

Russia engaged for years in systematic state-sponsored doping to improve athletic performance, said a commission of the World Anti-Doping Agency, which recommended that Russian track-and-field competitors be barred from the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

The 323-page report released Monday by the independent commission described a secret doping program allegedly run for at least the past five years by Russian government officials, physicians, coaches, and track-and-field athletes to give the country a prohibited edge in international competitions. The report said Russian athletes unwilling to participate in the program faced expulsion from their team and other threats.

“It’s worse than we thought,” Dick Pound, chairman of the three-person commission that prepared the report, said at a news conference in Geneva. “We found coverups, we found destruction of samples, we found payments of money in order to conceal doping tests.”

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