Doping samples switched at 2013 world champs

Montreal - Doping failures by athletes at the 2013 world athletics championships in Moscow were swapped before being sent on for testing by the sport's ruling body the IAAF, an independent report said Monday.

Canadian law professor Richard McLaren, said the ploy was used by Moscow's anti-doping laboratory to avoid doped Russian athletes being detected.

"After the completion of the Moscow championships, the laboratory held a number of positive samples that needed to be swapped by removing the cap and replacing the athlete's dirty urine before the samples were shipped to another laboratory as instructed by the IAAF," he asserted.

McLaren was asked by the World Anti-Doping Agency to investigate wide-ranging allegations made by former Moscow anti-doping laboratory director Grigory Rodchenkov about the manipulation of doping samples at the Sochi Olympics in 2014.