Sports doping watchdog the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) released a second, 144-page report on Russia's institutional doping scandal today, and it largely confirms the figures from their previous investigation in July. But the deeper analysis yielded hundreds of documents that set the timeline and depth of the wide-ranging corruption.According to the report, over 1,000 Russian athletes have been implicated in the state-sponsored scandal, which dates back to 2011. While the report proves the existence of doping cover-ups across summer, winter, and Paralympic sports, it found more evidence pertaining to summer athletes, implicating over 600 (84 percent) athletes, as compared to the 95 (16 percent) of winter athletes.The report was issued by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren—a professor at Western University in Ontario, who specializes in sports law—who also led the previous investigation. McLaren acknowledged the inherent challenges in creating a fully-comprehensive report at a news conference today, according to the The New York Times,"It is impossible to know just how deep and how far back this conspiracy goes," Mr. McLaren said on Friday, calling the "immutable facts" of his report clear but far from comprehensive. "For years, international sports competitions have unknowingly been hijacked by the Russians."In the report, McLaren describes part of the difficulty in seeking out an extensive investigation as a result of witnesses' fear of retaliation and abuse.Over 1,000 individual documents from the investigation—including forensic evidence, emails, and scientific analysis—have been released and details will emerge in the coming weeks, outlining the damning paper trail and evidence of Russia's doping cover-ups. McLaren examined over 100 of the 250 urine samples kept since 2014's Sochi Olympics, and found that each of them was tampered with—including 15 medalists, four of them gold winners.Some such details to emerge from McLaren's findings were: two female hockey players' samples contained male DNA; eight Sochi samples contained more or less salt content than was humanly possible.The evidence is being stacked up in an effort to determine how to proceed with penalizing Russia ahead of Pyeongchang 2018.
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