Doping agency clears 95 of 96 Russian athletes, bringing report into question
Washington — The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) is set to clear 95 Russian athletes investigated over involvement in the country’s alleged mammoth doping programme, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. A leaked internal Wada report, published by the newspaper on Tuesday, said the agency found it could not gather enough evidence against 95 out of 96 Russian athletes it has been probing. "The available evidence was insufficient to support the assertion of an anti-doping rule violation against these 95 athletes," Wada director-general Olivier Niggli wrote in the document. The report did not name any of the athletes under investigation. A string of Wada reports has previously uncovered reams of evidence that the Russian authorities ran a large-scale programme to help competitors cheat international doping tests. The Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) was declared "non-compliant" with international sport’s anti-doping code in November 2015 and its track and field Olympics squad an...
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