Richard McLaren: ‘It is impossible to know just how deep this goes’

A new report into systematic Russian doping details a wide-ranging “institutional conspiracy” that involved more than 1,000 athletes across more than 30 sports, including evidence corroborating large-scale sample swapping at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) investigator Richard McLaren said the conspiracy involved the Russian Sports Ministry, national anti-doping agency and the FSB intelligence service, providing further details of state involvement in a massive programme of cheating and cover-ups that ran on an “unprecedented scale” from 2011-15.

“It is impossible to know just how deep and how far back this conspiracy goes,” McLaren said in London.