Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) President Alexander Zhukov has said it will need the services of best experts in international law to challenge the doping accusations brought against Russian sport in the McLaren report.
According to the Part 2 report, delivered over two weeks ago in London by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Independent Commission and its chairman, Canadian sports law professor Richard McLaren, over 1,000 Russian athletes competing in summer, winter and Paralympic sports could have been involved in the manipulations system to conceal positive doping tests. McLaren’s Part Two report claimed in particular that doping samples of 12 Russian medallists of 2014 Winter Games in Sochi had been tampered with. Doping tests of two more Russian athletes, who won 4 gold medals at Sochi Olympics, had been falsified as well.
“Good sports law experts are as valuable as gold in the entire sports world. The Russian Olympic Committee has a good legal service. It helped us much to ensure participation in the Rio de Janeiro Games,” he told on Tuesday. “But is it necessary to invite international lawyers specializing in international law. Support from serious international lawyers will be needed in case of litigations at the Court of Arbitration for Sport or in third countries, which is most probable.”
McLaren later said that the decision against making public the names of athletes, who are allegedly guilty of doping abuse, was made in respect to their private life, and, it should be done by international sports federations and not him personally.
Post the report, the 2017 IBSF (International Biathlon and Skeleton Federation) World Championship, the 2017
FIS (International Ski Federation) World Cup finals and the 2017 ISU (International Skating Union) World Cup finals from Russia.