The world of athletics has been left reeling this week after a shocking report has detailed the allegations of state-sponsored doping programs by Russia. The findings were delivered by an independent agency and were commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency or WADA who have raised the possibility that Russian track and field athletes could be banned from the 2016 Olympics.
The top anti-doping official in Russia has so far denounced the report as ‘unprofessional, illogical and declarative’ yet some of the evidence has already been passed to Interpol, the international crime-fighting organisation, to look into further.
Secret police
One of the most shocking allegations is that degree to which the state is involved in efforts to elude anti-doping rules, according to the report. One example cited that agents of the FSB, the successor to the KGB, visited the key laboratory involved in testing and even posed as staff.
They regularly visited the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory and staff members said they believed their phones were tapped along with parts of the facility being bugged. In Sochi, where the Winter Olympics were held last year, one lab worker spoke of high degree of intrusion, where people from the federal security service posed as lab engineers.
Samples destroyed
The report also drew a worrying picture of the lab, where it was suggested that there was widespread cover up of positive doping tests. In the most spectacular example, there was the ‘intentional and malicious destruction’ of over 1400 test samples in the lab despite the WADA team requesting they be kept.
The director of the lab, Grigroy Rodchenkov, ordered that the samples were thrown out, just days before the team arrived to inspect them in December. He said that he had decided to do some ‘cleaning up’ to prepare for the visit and claimed to have misunderstood the instructions to keep the samples.
Bribes
Systematic bribery by athletes and their coaches to ensure doping practises were ignored is another allegation. Interviews said that the officers of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) accepted money placed on the table at the time of drug tests while athletes were often left unaccompanied when giving samples, therefore meaning there was no proof they had even given the sample.
An example was an elite marathon runner who paid her coach as well as the medical director of the All-Russia Athletic Federation a sum of money each year to protection her from receiving positive drug tests.
Other allegations include intimidation of doping testers as well as the use of false identities to dodge tests or to avoid being caught doping.
the report was overseen by the former present of WADA< Dick Pound, who said that he found evidence of a ‘deeply rooted culture of cheating at all levels’ within Russian athletics including a suggestion that the London 2012 Olympics – where Russia won 24 gold medals – were in a sense, sabotaged by the admission of athletes who should not have been completion.
The report also criticised the attitude of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the governing body of the sport, as well as recommending five coaches and athletes from Russia be immediately banned for life.
