(ATR) Days before the second McLaren Report on the Russian doping scandal, the IOC announces a change in leadership of a commission investigating the evidence.
IOC Ethics Commission vice chair Guy Canivet has stepped down from that post as well as the chairmanship of the doping commission set up in July to probe the involvement of Russian government ministers. McLaren alleged that the sports ministry was implicated in state-directed doping in his first report.
Canivet, a former judge of the French Constitutional Court, cited "personal reasons" in a conversation with IOC president Thomas Bach, according to IOC spokesman Mark Adams.
Samuel Schmid has been appointed to replace Canivet. The former president the Swiss Confederation is one of the eight remaining member of the IOC ethics panel.
The commission now headed by Schmid is working in parallel with a separate inquiry led by Swiss IOC member Denis Oswald. The remit of Oswald’s panel is to investigate allegations of doping manipulation at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics.
WADA investigator Richard McLaren in July released a bombshell report detailing the scale of government and Russian secret service involvement in manipulating doping samples at the Sochi Olympics.
Twenty summer Olympic sports were implicated in his report.
With the PyeongChang 2018 Olympics on the horizon, McLaren’s work has more recently focused on winter sports athletes and federations in connection with the Sochi doping scandal.
Communications director Adams said the IOC has yet to put a timetable on completion of the IOC commission reports. But they are expected to publish their findings in the next few months.
Adams said the handover from Canivet to Schmid was "assured."
"I don’t see there being any particular delay," he told a press conference at the Palace Hotel in Lausanne on the first day of the IOC Executive Board meeting.
Earlier Tuesday, Bach reported to his IOC colleagues on his clear-the-air talks with WADA president Craig Reedie that took place yesterday. The 90-minute meeting was described as "very positive and constructive."
Adams said discussions about WADA issues also took place around the IOC’s top table and "are not yet over."
Written and reported in Lausanne by Mark Bisson .
25 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribers only.
Recent Articles
Sinner-Alcaraz, the duel that came to succeed the three phenomenons
Beyond the final result, Roland Garros left the feeling that the Italian and the Spaniard will shape the great duel that came to help us through the duel for the end of the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic era.
Table tennis: Brazil’s Bruna Costa Alexandre will be Olympic and Paralympic in Paris 2024
She is the third in her sport and the seventh athlete to achieve it in the same edition; in Santiago 2023 she was the first athlete with disabilities to compete at the Pan American level and won a medal.
Rugby 7s: the best player of 2023 would only play the medal match in Paris
Argentinian Rodrigo Isgró received a five-game suspension for an indiscipline in the circuit’s decisive clash that would exclude him until the final or the bronze match; the Federation will seek to make the appeal successful.
Rhonex Kipruto, owner of the world record for the 10000 meters on the road, was suspended for six years
The Kenyan received the maximum sanction for irregularities in his biological passport and the Court considered that he was part of a system of “deliberate and sophisticated doping” to improve his performance. He will lose his record and the bronze medal at the Doha World Cup.
Katie Ledecky spoke about doping Chinese swimmers: “It’s difficult to go to Paris knowing that we’re going to compete with some of these athletes”
The American, a seven-time Olympic champion, referred to the case of the 23 positive controls before the Tokyo Games that were announced a few weeks ago and shook the swimming world. “I think our faith in some of the systems is at an all-time low,” he said.
