A devastating and damning report into Russian sport has found that the country’s government, security services and sporting authorities colluded to hide widespread doping across “a vast majority” of winter and summer sports. The International Olympic Committee has promised it will not hesitate to take “toughest sanctions available” against those implicated.

Wada: Russian government oversaw widespread doping – as it happened Read more

The review, led by the highly respected Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren, found widespread state action to hide cheating among Russian athletes in the run up to the London 2012 Olympics, as well as a comprehensive cover up of doping during the World Championships in Moscow and the World University Games in Kazan in 2013 and the Winter Olympics in Sochi a year later.

In light of Monday’s report, the World Anti-Doping Agency has now explicitly urged the IOC to consider banning Russia from the Olympics altogether while also suggesting Russia’s government officials should be denied access to Rio 2016.

The IOC president Thomas Bach called the McLaren report “a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sports and on the Olympic Games”. The IOC’s executive board will meet via conference call on Tuesday to make initial decisions on possible sanctions for the Rio Games.

McLaren also confirmed the staggering allegations made by Dr Grigory Rodchenkov, the head of the Moscow laboratory between 2005 and 2015, that steroid-tainted urine samples were substituted with clean ones in Sochi with the help of Russia’s intelligence and anti-doping officials to enable athletes to pass doping tests.

However McLaren refused to say whether his findings should lead to Russia being banned from the Olympics in Rio which begin next month. “My mandate was to establish facts not to make recommendations,” he said. “It is for others to take and absorb and act upon my report.”

Wada does not have the authority to directly ban a country from the Olympics, but they can recommend sanctions to the IOC.

McLaren admitted that his report, which had taken 57 days to produce, was only a “thin slice” of what might be out there – yet its findings are hugely damaging for Russia.

The central finding of McLaren’s investigation was that Russian athletes “from the vast majority of summer and winter Olympic sports” had benefited from what he called “the Disappearing Positive Methodology” which had become state policy after the country’s poor medal count during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver.

The report found that all organs of the state were involved, including the Russian sports ministry, the Russian security service the FSB, and the Centre of Sports Preparation of National Teams of Russia (CSP). According to McLaren a key figure was the deputy minister of sport, Yuri Nagornykh, who was appointed in 2010 by executive order of the then prime minister, Vladimir Putin. Nagornykh, a member of the Russian Olympic Committee, was advised of every positive analytical finding arising in the Moscow Laboratory from 2011 onwards – and “decided who would benefit from a cover up and who would not be protected”.

As McLaren put it: “This is a slice of what is going on, not the total picture. But this included most of the winter and summer sports. And we do know that every single positive was sent up the chain of command and sent back down again.”

McLaren added that he was “supremely confident in our findings”, insisted that he had only considered evidence “that is beyond reasonable doubt”. That included claims by Rodchenkov that he had helped dozens of Russian athletes with a cocktail of banned substances including metenolone, trenbolone and oxandrolone which he mixed with alcohol - and, to improve the absorption of the steroids and shorten the detection window, dissolved the drugs in Chivas whisky for male athletes and Martini vermouth for women.

The investigation also backed up Rodchenkov’s claims that FSB agents had tampered with samples during the Sochi Olympics to replace those that would have otherwise tested positive for steroids. As McLaren explained, he had sent stored samples from Sochi to London lab to see if bottles had been opened, and “all the bottles had scratches and marks on it.”

The US Anti-Doping Agency’s chief executive Travis Tygart described the corruption found by the report as “mind-blowing”. “The McLaren Report has concluded, beyond a reasonable doubt, a mind-blowing level of corruption within both Russian sport and government that goes right to the field of play,” he said.”Most importantly, our hearts go out to athletes from all over the world who were robbed of their Olympic dreams. We must come together as an international community – comprised of those who truly believe in the spirit of Olympism – to ensure this unprecedented level of criminality never again threatens the sports we cherish.”

Over the next few days the clamour for all Russia’s athletes to be banned from Rio is likely to grow. Last month the Guardian exclusively revealed that the hugely respected chairs of the IOC Athletes’ Commission and the Wada athletes’ committee, Claudia Bokel and Beckie Scott, whose organisations represent the views of thousands of athletes worldwide, had written to Bach and Sir Craig Reedie warning them they were “shattering the confidence” of athletes because they had failed to do enough to tackle doping, particularly with Russia.

Banned Russian athletes victims of smear campaign, claims documentary Read more

On Saturday the New York Times revealed that Scott was a key figure in a draft letter, from anti-doping officials from at least 10 nations - including the United States, Germany, Spain, Japan, Switzerland and Canada - and 20 athletes’ groups, calling for the entire Russian delegation to be barred from Rio. According to the newspaper, the letter is expected to be published within hours of the McLaren report in a bid to put pressure on the IOC to take a firm line against Russia. However most experts expect the IOC to resist such pressure. Russian state media called into doubt the results shortly before they were published. The Russian deputy prime minister and Olympic committee head Dmitry Kozak has written to Olympic Committee head Bach and Wada to complain that Wada is trying to “create an international coalition of athletes and organisations supporting a ban on Russian athletes at the Olympic games”. He said Scott, who should be protecting clean athletes, was instead supporting the US and Canada in an attempt to “place collective responsibility on all clean Russian athletes and punish them for the actions of a few.”

Last month Russia’s track and field stars were banned from the Rio Olympic Games by the IAAF, the governing body of athletics. The results of an appeal to the court of arbitration for sport in Lausanne will be revealed on Thursday.