International biathlon and skating competitions due to take place in Russia next year have been moved from the country in the wake of the McLaren Report.

The International Biathlon Union said Russia had pulled out of hosting the Youth and Junior World Championships and a World Cup event, while the International Skating Union said the country had been stripped of a World Cup speed skating competition after professor Richard McLaren uncovered the extent of their state-sponsored doping programme.

Great Britain were set to boycott the Biathlon World Cup in Tyumen in March after McClaren's report claimed more than 1,000 Russians benefited from the doping programme between 2011 and 2015.

The IBU held an executive board meeting on Thursday in light, it said, of the “alarming findings” of the report and added in a statement that the Russian Biathlon Union had relinquished the World Cup meeting and the Youth and Junior World Championships, which had been due to take place in Ostrov.

“The relocation of both...events will be decided upon later,” the IBU said.

IBU president Anders Besseberg said: “This is a first important step by the Russian Biathlon Union to show to the IBU and to the world of sport that the current situation is taken very seriously. This will now allow the international biathlon family to focus on biathlon during these events.”



The IBU also said that it had provisionally suspended two Russian athletes, against whom the International Olympic Committee had started doping cases from samples provided at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. The governing body did not name the athletes.

The ISU meanwhile have decided to move March's World Cup Speed Skating event from Chelyabinsk. A new location has yet to be confirmed.