Sir Craig Reedie, from Bridge of Weir, became President of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on January 1st 2014, having previously been Chairman of the British Olympic Association as well as a board member for the London 2012 Organising Committee. He was elected onto the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) Executive Board in 2009 and then in 2012, he became Vice-President of the IOC, a position he still holds.
It was in Reedie’s first year as WADA President that the Russian doping story blew-up. In December 2014, the German broadcaster, ARD, aired a documentary alleging systematic doping within Russian athletics. WADA responded by setting up an independent commission, headed by Dick Pound, to investigate the claims. In November of last year, Pound’s report found evidence of state-sponsored doping within Russian athletics and recommended that Russian athletes were banned from competing in the Rio Olympic Games. In the days following the release of Pound’s report, the IAAF suspended Russia’s track and field athletes indefinitely, with reinstatement only to occur when there was evidence that state-sponsored doping had been eradicated.
In January of this year, Pound published the second part of his investigation which said that IAAF leaders must have known about the doping issues within Russia. In May 2016, the New York Times broke a story in which the former head of Russia's anti-doping laboratory, Grigory Rodchenkov, described an organised doping campaign within Russia. WADA commissioned the McLaren report, which was released last Monday. It detailed how Russian laboratories systematically ensured the disappearance and substitution of hundreds of positive samples from more than 30 summer and winter Olympic sports in a period that covered both the run-up to the 2012 Olympics and the 2014 Winter Olympics. This was carried out in a highly organised way and had involvement of the Russian state, the Russian ministry of sport and the federal security service.
Earlier this week, the Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected an appeal by the Russian Olympic Committee and 68 Russian track and field athletes who were attempting to overturn their suspension in time for the Rio Olympics, which begins in just 13 days. WADA has stated that it recommends that no Russian athletes in any sport should be allowed to compete in Rio; the IOC will rule on this in the coming days.
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