Benson competed for the Kiwi 4 x 100m freestyle relay team which finished 11th overall at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He was unsuccessful in his bid to qualify in both the 50m and 100m freestyle events for Rio.
"I definitely support the call. Once we get Russia out some of the other countries might be found out too so we can get a level playing field," Benson said.
"I always suspected there were a few countries involved in this sort of thing, not just in our sport of swimming and not just track and field and weightlifting. In my relay and individual events there were a bunch of Russians among the top 16 in the world setting the bar to unrealistic levels.
"We remember when Valerie Adams didn't get her moment to celebrate with gold at the last Olympics. Well there are lots of athletes chasing dreams who don't even get to the Games to compete because the standards are so high. There are only three people on the podium and people don't realise it's not just the fourth, fifth and sixth-placed athletes who missed out ... there are people who are sitting at home watching on the couch who could have been there had there been a level playing field."
A road cyclist at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Oliver always knew his sport was filled with drug cheats but it was tough to prove it back then.
"Most of the athletes in the Russian and East German teams were from the army and police force. They were controlled by the state ... the East Germans were found out later on," Oliver recalled.
"It's a shame past athletes had to battle against doping. At least they are starting to get on top of it and the tests are more thorough. There were super-human efforts we wondered about in our day and from my point of view the cheating still goes on at a lot lower levels but they're slowly pushing the lid down ... we're heading in the right direction," he added.
Paewai played at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
"I never saw any evidence of performance enhancing drugs. But I did see athletes using the Olympics as an opportunity to escape from their home country."
"I've got mixed emotions. While it is time for the ban I would like to think there are some Russian athletes who are genuine as everyone else but Russia might be the example.
"This has put a real dampener on the Games. Sport is supposed to put a smile on our faces win or lose. There is so much negativity everywhere so I would like the IOC to do what needs to be done."
Gray agreed the doping scandal had "mucked up the Olympics".
"I won't say which teams were doing it in Barcelona but some of the teams were seen putting syringes in rubbish tins around the place. It had been going on for some time."
Gray was a member of the 1980 New Zealand women's hockey team which missed out on playing at the Moscow Olympics. The New Zealand Olympic and Commonwealth Games Organising Committee decided no sponsor or government funds would be used to send a team in a belated response to the American President Jimmy Carter's call to boycott the Games in the wake of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan the previous year.
