Sports needs unified anti-doping system:Vitaly

Moscow, May 18: The world of sports needs a unified system of fighting against abuse of performance enhancing drugs in light of recently frequent doping scandals, Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko said on Wednesday. President of the Intertiol Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach said earlier in the day that a number of athletes could be banned from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil after their doping samples, collected at the 2008 Olympics in Chi, had been retested, reports Tass. “Today’s statement from the IOC shows that this is not the problem with Russia only,” Mutko said. “We must move ahead and create a unified system, which would exclude all possibilities of manipulations or of making cocktails.” “It means we need a system, which would be trusted in the whole world and we are ready for it,” Mutko said. “Foreign specialists are already working in RUSADA (the Russian Anti-Doping Agency) and we are ready for a foreign expert to take charge of the agency for several years.” In an interview with New York Times, published last week, ex-head of Moscow anti-doping laboratory Grigory Rodchenkov claimed that the Russian sports authorities allegedly prepared a special doping program for tiol athletes in order to win most of the medals at home Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014. (IANS)