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Dr Grigory Rodchenkov is open to amateur dramatics. When WADA founding president Dick Pound met him in his Moscow laboratory last year, Rodchenkov made it clear he knew much more than he was telling. The former chief of Moscow’s anti‑doping laboratory put his finger to his lips before acting out slitting his throat to make it clear why he would be keeping quiet when asked about doping in Russian athletics.

For Pound’s purposes, though, he had enough evidence for WADA’s first independent commission report without him but later said “it’s clear Rodchenkov is very knowledgeable”.

And it is his damming evidence based around allegations of state-backed doping by the hosts at the Sochi Winter Games in 2014 that form the basis for WADA’s latest independent commission which was being published in Toronto this afternoon.

Whereas the first report relied heavily on Vitaly Stepanov, an anti-doping official who Pound describes “as being low down the food chain”, Rodchenkov “knows where the bodies are buried”.

Until now, athletics in Russia has been singled out as the sporting bad guys; Rodchenkov’s evidence to Richard McLaren, Pound’s sidekick for the first commission report and now heading this one, making it clear that was the tip of the iceberg.

The question is what happens now? Over the weekend a series of leaks made it abundantly clear there is some appetite among national anti-doping organisations to extend the ban on Russia’s track and field team from competing at the Olympics to the entire Russian contingent.

Pound believes that less than three weeks out from the opening ceremony in Rio de Janeiro there is still time to do that.

But the reality is that, while the IAAF for their obvious past faults should be applauded for having banned Russian athletes in Rio, following such draconian measures is unlikely to be the ruling this time.

The IAAF decision led to political infighting with the International Olympic Committee, whose president Thomas Bach made it clear he wanted certain Russian athletes able to compete under the Russian flag.

Bach’s friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin has been well publicised and there will be enormous reticence from Bach and other IOC board members to give the thumbs-up to a wholesale Russian ban despite the recommendations of the McLaren report.

Bach does not stand alone in this view point. The fall-out from this latest WADA independent commission report already began over the course of the weekend before a word of it had been made public.

Travis Tygart, the boss of United States Anti-Doping Agency and the man that took down Lance Armstrong, as well as the Canadian national anti-doping agency wrote to the IOC calling for a wholesale Russian ban in Rio.

But tellingly the response has been quick. European Olympic Committee president Pat Hickey put out a strong statement in which he said there was “an attempt to agree an outcome before any evidence has been presented”.

Other Olympic committee bosses echoed Hickey’s stance among them Julio Maglione, president of swimming governing body FINA.

Maglione said: “FINA are concerned there has been a drive behind the scenes…to get global coalition of sport from selected organisations in the Olympic movement to support the call for the total ban on Russia”.

For all the calls that Russia are banned from Rio they are probably not strong enough for the country to be forced out altogether.