IOC Doping Commission Chief Quits

(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 .

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