LONDON (AP) – The Latest on the developments in the Olympic world (all times local):
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12 p.m.
IOC President Thomas Bach says anyone found to be involved in state-sponsored doping at the 2014 Sochi Olympics could receive a lifetime ban.
The International Olympic Committee has asked the World Anti-Doping Agency to carry out an investigation and plans to retest Sochi samples stored at the lab in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Bach says on a conference call that “if these allegations are proved we will hold everybody responsible who is implicated.”
Bach says there would be “lifelong bans for any implicated person, not only athletes but anyone implicated,” including national federations.
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9:55 a.m.
IOC President Thomas Bach says entire Russian sports federations could be suspended if allegations of state-supported doping at the 2014 Sochi Olympics are proven.
Bach says in an op-ed piece Wednesday that accusations that Russian officials subverted the drug-testing system at the Winter Games “represent a shocking new dimension in doping” and an “unimaginable level of criminality.”
He says if the allegations are found to be true, sanctions could include lifetime Olympic bans, tough financial penalties and “suspension or exclusion of entire national federations” like the one already imposed by the IAAF on Russia’s track and field program.
Bach’s statement comes a day after the IOC announced that 31 athletes could be barred from this year’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro after their doping samples from the 2008 Beijing Games came back positive in retests.
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9:45 a.m.
IOC vice president John Coates says the most recent positive doping results from the 2008 Beijing Olympics proves “if we don’t get you at the games, we will get you later.”
In a major doping crackdown, 31 athletes in six sports could be barred from competing at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in August after they were caught in retesting of samples from 2008.
The International Olympic Committee has opened disciplinary proceedings against the athletes from 12 countries who competed in Beijing and were planning to take part in Rio. The names and countries have not been published.
Coates, speaking in Sydney, said he was not aware if any of 31 were from Australia.
He says “I don’t know where these athletes come from.”
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8:30 a.m.
The president of the Japanese Olympic Committee says the body will investigate the 2020 bidding process and payments to a Singapore firm that has enmeshed the Tokyo bid in a bribery investigation.
Tsunekazu Takeda, who had been one of the leaders of the bid committee, told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday that people involved with the bid would be investigated.
Takeda says “we have decided to start an investigation into the matter, including questioning staff, to determine whether there was any illegality involved.”
French prosecutors have said that 2.8 million Singapore dollars ($2 million) was apparently transferred from Japan to the Singapore account of a company called Black Tidings.
The account holder, Ian Tan Tong Han, has been closely tied to the son of former IAAF President Lamine Diack.