Doped athletes from Beijing, London and Sochi all targeted

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31 athletes from six different sports from 12 countries failed the drug test.

The IOC Executive Board met in special session today to step up the fight against drugs cheats. Speaking after the meeting IOC President Thomas Bach – himself an Olympic Champion – announced additional measures to protect the clean athletes.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) retested 454 selected doping samples from the Olympic Games Beijing 2008. The re-tests follow work with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the International Federations. They were focused on athletes who could potentially start at the Olympic Games Rio 2016 and were conducted using the very latest scientific analysis methods. As a result up to 31 athletes from six sports could be banned from competing at the Olympic Games in Rio. The Executive Board of the IOC today agreed unanimously to initiate proceedings immediately, with the 12 NOCs* concerned informed in the coming days. All those athletes infringing anti-doping rules will be banned from competing at the Olympic Games Rio 2016.

The fight to protect the clean athletes does not stop there, with 250 more results from retesting of samples from the Olympic Games London 2012 to come shortly. The aim is to stop any drugs cheats coming to the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

The IOC will also undertake a wider re-testing programme of medalists from Beijing and London. The samples of those athletes who could be awarded medals following the disqualification of others will also be retested.

Swift and decisive action will also follow the controversy surrounding the anti-doping laboratory in Sochi. Meeting Tuesday, the EB of the IOC has requested WADA to initiate a fully fledged investigation into allegations that testing at the Sochi Laboratory was subverted. The IOC for its part will instruct the Lausanne Anti-Doping Laboratory, where the Sochi samples are stored for ten years, to proceed in cooperation with WADA with their analysis in the most sophisticated and efficient way possible. Also, the IOC has already requested the Russian Olympic Committee to undertake all efforts to ensure the full cooperation of the Russian side in the WADA investigation. The IOC has put its Medical and Scientific Director, who himself is an Olympic Champion, at the disposal of the WADA investigation. Based on the result of this investigation the IOC will take swift action.

“All these measures are a powerful strike against the cheats we do not allow to win. They show once again that dopers have no place to hide. The re-tests from Beijing and London and the measures we are taking following the worrying allegations against the Laboratory in Sochi are another major step to protect the clean athletes irrespective of any sport or any nation. We keep samples for ten years so that the cheats know that they can never rest,” said the IOC President, an Olympic Gold Medalist in Fencing himself. “By stopping so many doped athletes from participating in Rio we are showing once more our determination to protect the integrity of the Olympic competitions, including the Rio anti-doping laboratory, so that the Olympic magic can unfold in Rio de Janeiro.”

Protecting the clean athletes is a key pillar of Olympic Agenda 2020 the strategic roadmap for the future of the Olympic Movement. This means that all those implicated in doping cases whether it be athletes, coaches, doctors or any other persons or organizations must be punished using the full powers available. Recent measures include:

• The IOC is funding the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to carry out intelligence-gathering to make testing in the lead-up to the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro as efficient and independent as possible. Out-of-competition testing during the Olympic Games will also be guided by this intelligence group from WADA, to make it more targeted and more effective.

• In March of this year, the International Olympic Committee decided to make sanctions at the Olympic Games independent from the IOC. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) will handle cases from the Olympic Games Rio 2016 onwards. The CAS Anti-Doping Division will replace the IOC Disciplinary Commission to hear and decide on doping cases at the Olympic Games, as well as the subsequent re-analysis of samples taken at the Games.

• At the fourth Olympic Summit in October 2015, the Olympic Movement asked the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to propose a solution to make to make all anti-doping testing independent from sports organisations, to avoid any perceived conflict of interest. A working group consisting of representatives of ASOIF, AWOIF, WADA and the IOC was set up to study the feasibility and terms of reference of the proposal of independent testing.

• The IOC set up a twenty million US dollar fund to protect the clean athletes. Ten million US dollars is being used to develop a robust education and awareness programme on the risk of match fixing and any kind of manipulation of competition and related corruption. A further ten million is being used to support projects offering a new scientific approach to anti-doping. Through its Medical and Scientific Commission, the IOC called on researchers to apply for support and funding of athlete-centred projects, involving both science and social research. Committing 10 million US dollars to fund research pertaining to anti-doping for the protection of athletes, the strategy of this fund is to complement, but not duplicate, existing anti-doping research programmes. 12 grants have already been disbursed to support a range of research projects around the world.

The Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee today also threw its full support behind the “Global Declaration Against Corruption”, which was adopted at the International Anti-Corruption Summit organised by British Prime Minister David Cameron last Thursday in London. The IOC was represented there with IOC Member and President of the International Paralympic Committee Sir Philip Craven, who chaired a panel on sport and was joined by the IOC’s Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer, Pâquerette Girard Zappelli.

“Corruption is at the heart of so many of the world’s problems. We must overcome it if our efforts to end poverty, promote prosperity and defeat terrorism and extremism are to succeed,” the declaration reads.

The conference recognized the actions already undertaken by sport organisations and specifically welcomed the initiative of the IOC to launch “an International Sport Integrity Partnership in the margins of a meeting of the International Forum for Sport Integrity in Lausanne in early 2017.”

In this context and the allegations against the candidature of Tokyo for the Olympic Games 2020 the IOC EB took note of the declaration of the Japanese Olympic Committee and the former President of the Tokyo 2020 Bidding Committee, Tsunekazu Takeda, and the former Director General, Nobumoto Higuchi. In it they say that “The payments mentioned in the media were a legitimate consultant’s fee….It followed a full and proper contract and the monies were fully audited.”

The IOC will continue to work to shed full light to the issue. Therefore the IOC will keep its position as civil party to the French justice procedure and the IOC’s Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer will further actively cooperate in the legal inquiry.

The IOC takes decisive action to protect the clean athletes - doped athletes from Beijing, London and Sochi all targeted

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14 Russians guilty of doping at Beijing Olympics, suggests state media

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/20...ijing-olympics

Fourteen of the 31 athletes found to have doped at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing are Russian, according to the country’s state media.

A report by Tass suggests that the majority of those 14 individuals compete in track and field events, putting Russia’s athletics participation at Rio 2016 in further doubt. An International Association of Athletics Federations taskforce has already been set up to decide whether Russia’s athletes will be allowed to compete in Brazil following revelations of state-sponsored doping in the country, with a decision to be made on 17 June.

If confirmed, the latest spate of positive tests would mean Russia’s current suspension from international athletics competition would be unlikely to be lifted before Rio.

The International Olympic Committee announced last week that 31 individuals had tested positive for banned substances after 454 retrospective urine samples from the Beijing Games were examined. The IOC targeted athletes who were due to compete at Rio, using more advanced testing techniques than were available in 2008.

Those who failed the retrospective tests are not expected to be named until they have had the opportunity to request their “B” sample be examined, although the IOC disclosed that Olympians from 12 countries were implicated, spanning six sports. The British Olympic Association said last Tuesday that it had not been contacted by the IOC and was not aware of any British athletes involved.

Pressure to bar Russia from the Olympics has already grown after UK Anti-Doping recently revealed its testing operation in the country had been hampered by a number of obstacles. Of 247 tests overseen from November last year to early this month, 99 were unable to be carried out because of an inability to locate an athlete and one test was refused.

The IOC and the World Anti-Doping Agency are also undergoing an investigation into the laboratory used for testing at the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, amid serious allegations that Russian samples were switched to a shadow lab in order to avoid banned substances being discovered.

The New York Times reported last week that the US Department of Justice had opened an investigation into the Russian doping scandal. Officials in Russia have said that the country is undergoing reform of its anti-doping system and that its athletes should be allowed to compete at Rio.

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IOC Announces 45 Athletes with PED Violations in Second Wave of Reanalysis from the Beijing and London Olympics

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has identified 45 new athletes who tested positive for banned performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) after a “second wave” of stored samples from the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Olympics were reanalyzed. The new results affect 30 athletes from Beijing and 15 athletes from London.

“The new reanalysis once again shows the commitment of the IOC in the fight against doping,” IOC president Thomas Bach said in a statement.

With the latest results, the first two waves of a planned four waves of reanalysis have been completed. The reanalysis strategy is part of a carefully planned and coordinated effort outlined in Olympic Agenda 2020 to target former Olympic athletes who are likely to compete again at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The IOC has allocated $1.2 million towards the reanalysis of stored samples before each edition of the Summer Olympic Games and $500,000 before each edition of the Winter Olympic Games.

The first wave of reanalysis involved 454 samples from the Beijing Olympics and 265 samples from London Olympics for a total of 719 samples. The 454 Beijing samples represented six sports and 12 countries while the 265 London samples represented 5 sports and 6 countries.

A total of 54 athletes were originally tagged with provisional adverse analytical findings (PAAFs) after the first wave of testing. Two of those PAAFs were dismissed while one additional adverse analytical finding (AAF) was confirmed. This placed the revised number of athletes who tested positive during the first wave at 43.

The second wave of reanalysis involved 524 samples from Beijing (386) and London (138). The second wave focused primarily on Olympic medalists. At least 23 of the 30 PAAFs from the Beijing Olympics were medalists. The 30 PAAFs from Beijing represented four sports and eight countries. The 15 new AAFs from London represented two sports and nine countries.

This means that a total of 98 athletes have been implicated in doping during the first two waves of reanalysis. All 98 of the athletes implicated in the first two waves of reanalysis will immediately be banned from participating and competing at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

If the third and fourth waves identify athletes actively competing in Rio, it could cause quite the disruption and ensuing controversy.