Putin Says Politics Taint Sport as WADA Seeks Russia Olympic Ban
- Sports Ministry, FSB manipulated doping tests, report finds
- WADA wants athletes presented by Russia barred from Rio games
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President Vladimir Putin said sport was being made a tool of “geopolitical pressure” after a damning report into drugs cheating prompted the World Anti-Doping Agency to call for a near total ban on Russian athletes from the 2016 Olympics.
“We are seeing a dangerous return to politics interfering with sport,” Putin said in a statement issued by the Kremlin Monday. “Yes, the form of interference has changed but the goal is the same: to make sport an instrument to apply geopolitical pressure” in ways that led to boycotts of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the 1984 Los Angeles games over the Soviet Union’s entry into Afghanistan, he said.