WADA wants blanket ban on Russian athletes in Rio

WADA also said Russian government officials should also be denied access to international competitions, including Rio 2016.

WADA president Craig Reede has asked IOC to bar all Russian athletes from competing in Rio Olympics.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on Monday recommended that the IOC and International Paralympic Committee should consider banning all athletes entered by the Russian Olympic Committee for next month's Rio Olympics.

WADA was responding to a >damning independent report produced by Richard McLaren and published on Monday that revealed evidence of widespread state-sponsored doping by Russian athletes at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

WADA also said Russian government officials should also be denied access to international competitions, including Rio 2016.

"WADA calls on Sport Movement to deny Russian athletes participation at international comp including Rio until 'culture change' achieved," WADA spokesman Ben Nichols tweeted.

"WADA: doping scheme across 30 sports mean there can no longer be presumption of innocence. Russian doping control system called into question."

McLaren found that Russia's secret service and top sports ministry officials — as well as those responsible for preparing Russian athletes -- made some positive samples vanish and switched clean samples for doping-tainted ones at other times during the Winter Games in Russia.

It comes just a fortnight before the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics, a Games that Russian athletics competitors are already banned from based on earlier decisions by the IAAF.

The McLaren probe "reveals most deliberate and disturbing abuse of power ever seen in sport," WADA said through a Nichols tweet, calling the scheme "totally unacceptable."

Bach calls Russia doping 'shocking and unprecedented'

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it will carefully study the complex and detailed allegations, in particular with regard to the Russian Ministry of Sport.

“The findings of the report show a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sport and on the Olympic Games. Therefore, the IOC will not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organisation implicated,” IOC President Thomas Bach said.

The IOC Executive Board (EB) will convene in a telephone conference tomorrow to take its first decisions, which may include provisional measures and sanctions with regard to the Rio Games.

Kremlin condemns 'dangerous interference' in sport

The Kremlin on Monday condemned what it called a "dangerous" return to political interference in sport after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) called for Russia to be banned from the Rio Olympics.

Referring to an international boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, the Kremlin said in a statement that "now we are seeing a dangerous recurrence of interference of politics in sport.

"Yes, the forms of such interference have changed, but the aim is the same as before: to make sport an instrument of geopolitical pressure."