The Russian doping system could, according to the leniency witness Grigory Rodchenkov’s lawyer, be larger than previously thought and could even include several thousand athletes.
This was explained by lawyer Jim Walden in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, referring to the data from the Moscow control laboratory that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) received in November.
“Not only do they lead to 30 athletes from Sochi in 2014, or to the thousand who McLaren believes have benefited from the system,” said Jim Walden:”It’s about thousands of athletes who have been protected by the Russian doping system.
The WADA had a meeting on 10. On 11 November, the Commission informed the European Commission that it had been notified by its own in-house investigation team that it had acquired the so-called Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) of the Moscow laboratory. According to WADA, the data collection contains all doping test data between January 2012 and August 2015. These data coincided with the information provided by Rodchenkow on the manipulation of doping samples.
The IOC had excluded Russia from the South Korean Winter Games on Tuesday evening because of systematic doping, but allowed clean athletes to participate under certain conditions. Clean athletes can compete for Team OAR (“Olympic Athletes from Russia”).
Rodtschenkov’s statements played an important role. WADA Special Investigator Richard McLaren had stated in his report that around 1000 athletes had benefited from the system.