Russia vows to take WADA doping allegations seriously

A senior Russian sports official vowed on Saturday that the country would take the recent report on a state-sponsored doping system in the country seriously, although the accusations were "unpleasant".

On Friday, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) published the second part of an investigation report on Russian doping, noting that an institutional conspiracy existed across summer and winter sports athletes who participated with Russian government officials.

According the report, over 1,000 Russian athletes competing in summer, winter and Paralympic sport, can be identified as being involved in or benefiting from manipulations to conceal positive doping tests, the Xinhua news agency reported.

"This isn't very pleasant and no one will underestimate the report and the allegations. But we now must proceed to the legal aspects," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko said.

However, Mutko, who was Russia's former Sports Minister, said that from the "organisational point of view" the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and WADA should be responsible for the anti-doping procedures rather than Russia.

He added that Russia supported the IOC for its decision to retest the doping test samples of Russian athletes from the Sochi Games.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that Moscow would not respond "emotionally" to the allegations, adding that the country would carefully study the report before it makes any judgments.

The first part of the investigation report was published in July, in which Russia was accused of running a statewide doping programme and a number of athletes routinely used drugs to enhance performance at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

--IANS

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