The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has decided not to ban all Russian teams from competing in next month’s Rio Olympics over allegations of an elaborate doping scheme.

The announcement came after an IOC meeting Sunday. The IOC said it is up to individual sports federations to determine whether to clear Russian athletes for the Olympics.

A recent World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) report cited widespread, state-sponsored doping by Russian athletes at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and called for the IOC to ban all Russian athletes and officials from the Summer Games in Brazil. Lead WADA investigator Richard McLaren said that evidence shows a Moscow laboratory “operated for the protection of doped Russian athletes, within a state-dictated failsafe system.”

He said findings showed that efforts to mask the doping were coordinated by Russia’s state-run Center of Sports Preparation, and that athletes were instructed in how to manipulate results of routine urine testing designed to detect such abuses in international competition.

Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended his minister of sport last week pending an investigation, but also cast doubt on the integrity of the WADA report.

“The allegations against Russian athletes are built on the testimony of one — a person with a scandalous reputation,” the Russian leader said in a statement issued on the Kremlin’s official website.

Putin also noted that, much like the Soviet and American boycotts of past Olympics, politics was again at the forefront of the current Russian doping scandal.

Controversy erupted earlier this year when Moscow’s former Anti-Doping Laboratory Head Grigory Rodchenkov told The New York Times that dozens of Russian athletes used performance-enhancing drugs in Sochi with approval of national sports authorities. [Read More]

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Source: VOA News: Education