LAUSANNE, Switzerland – On Tuesday, the International Olympic Committee asked the World Anti-Doping Agency to launch a “fully-fledged investigation” into allegations that the drug-testing system at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi was subverted by Russian officials.
The IOC said it would ask the Lausanne anti-doping lab and WADA to proceed with analyzing Sochi samples “in the most sophisticated and efficient way possible.”
READ MORE: 31 Olympic athletes caught doping after IOC retests samples from Beijing games
Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of the Russian anti-doping laboratory, told the New York Times last week that he switched tainted urine samples for clean ones for Russian athletes who were part of a state-sponsored doping program. He has offered to assist in retesting.
Nearly 500 doping samples from the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin have already been retested. The IOC has not disclosed whether those retests had produced any positive cases.
Thirty-one athletes were also caught doping at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Five athletes were caught in retests of samples from the 2004 Athens Olympics, including men’s shot put winner Yuriy Bilonog of Ukraine.
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