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Russian official owns up to Olympic doping program

A Russian official admitted for the first time to the existence of a national doping operation that has implicated Olympic athletes across the country.

The second part of the McLaren Report, commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, published this month found that more than 1,000 Russian athletes across 30 sports "were involved in or benefited from" a state-sponsored doping regime.

The report's author, Canadian law professor Richard McLaren, said the Olympic Games in London in 2012 had been "corrupted on an unprecedented scale."

The Russian Ministry of Sport rejected claims that the state had been involved in a doping system, narrowly defining "the state" as Russian president Vladimir Putin and his closest associates, according to The New York Times.