Russian officials issued a statement Wednesday, backtracking on admissions of state-sponsored doping orchestrated at the highest levels that involved hundreds of the country's athletes and tainted some of the world's most exalted international sporting events.
Russian officials were asked over several days of interviews with The New York Times whether they still disputed credible evidence of a systematic, organized doping program for Russian athletes centered on the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, and they said they could no longer do so.
"It was an institutional conspiracy," Anna Antseliovich, the acting head of the Russian anti-doping agency, told the newspaper of a doping program that included cover-ups of positive tests across dozens of summer and winter Olympic sports.