Russia, doping and bans running on endless loop
World Anti-doping Agency wasn’t ruthless enough, and now the mess is even bigger
We are now at the point where Russian doping scandals are as much a part of the Olympic experience as construction cost overruns and mascots of uncertain biology.
A committee of the World Anti-doping Agency has recommended that Russia’s anti-drug regulators be declared non-compliant, which could result in the country being booted from the Tokyo Olympics in the same manner of Pyeongchang 2018, where the country’s flag and anthem were excised from the Games, although certain athletes were allowed to compete under a neutral banner.
The New York Times reported on Monday that WADA’S compliance and review committee suggested a four-year ban of Russia from all global sports, which would imperil its participation in not just the next two Olympics, but also soccer’s European championship this summer and the World Cup in Qatar in 2022. WADA’S executive committee is expected to adopt the recommendations at a meeting on Dec. 9, according to multiple reports.
These developments are not at all surprising to anyone who has followed this story since Russia’s state-sponsored doping scheme was first exposed in 2015, but they are also a product of WADA’S own making. The anti-doping regulator, which is supposed to be ruthless in its pursuit of clean sport, has a consistent habit of seeking compromise when harsh sanctions are required.
Russia was supposed to be following a strict road map to get back into WADA’S good graces after the events that led to its expulsion in Korea, but in the fall of 2018 the anti-doping regulator decided to reinstate Russia on the condition that it hand over thousands of drug-test results and admit the extent of its state-sponsored scheme. Beckie Scott, the Canadian Olympic medallist, resigned her post at WADA over the decision, calling it at the time “a devastating blow to clean sport.”
Scott’s contention, shared by other critics of the early reinstatement, was that it would allow Russia to escape ever having to admit the scope of what it had done: athletes were put on doping programs under the direction of anti-doping scientists, test results were altered, dirty urine samples were swapped out for clean samples through a literal hole in the wall of a drug lab.
Those warnings have proven to be exactly prescient. Russia stalled when it was supposed to hand over its drug-testing database, and then when it did, investigators discovered that it had been altered, with positive tests deleted and others manipulated. There is a simple reason for this: Russia has always insisted that the breadth of the scandal was exaggerated by nosy parker Westerners, and that whatever happened was merely the work of a small number of rogues acting without the blessing of senior leaders. A couple of those senior leaders, in a very Russian twist, also ended up dead.
An untouched Russian drug-testing database would have put all those assertions under scrutiny, and allowed WADA to see the extent of its doping efforts. A manipulated database merely confirms that Russia still has much to hide. This is particularly significant given the International Olympic Committee stripped Russia of 13 medals won at Sochi 2014, but nine of them were restored by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, citing insufficient evidence for the disqualifications. The required evidence would have been in the Russian database, before it was tampered with.
Yuri Ganus, the relatively new head of Russia’s anti-doping agency, has even said he is dismayed by the manipulation of the database that was turned over to WADA.
“Russia is a high-level sports country, but those people who are responsible to solve this situation for many years chose the wrong way, the wrong approach,” he said this month.
One hopes Mr. Ganus has someone testing his food these days.
There is one intractable problem that makes any attempt to deal with the Russian scandal feel pointless. It was just so big that trying to legislate it after the fact is always going to be unwieldy. Consider one of the stories of Grey Cup week, the suspension this season of Winnipeg Blue Bombers running back Andrew Harris for a positive steroid test. He insisted he didn’t do anything intentionally wrong and was the victim of a tainted supplement, but he was punished anyway. This is what happens with steroids: if you are found to have something illegal in your body, the sanctions do not care how it came to be there. It is an absolute-liability offence, and the only evidence needed to convict are the scientific tests.
But the Russian scandal, backed by mountains of documentary evidence from whistleblowers who were both athletes and scientists, went into the highest reaches of that country’s sport system.
Doping efforts are normally secretive and subtle. Russia went the other way, deciding from the top to dope the hell out of anyone who seemed like a medal threat and see what happened.
What happened is Russia topped the medal table at Sochi 2014.
When the anti-doping program is in fact running the precise opposite of that, all the usual avenues of evidence have been utterly corrupted. WADA and the CAS have for years been trying to apply the normal standards to Russia’s athletes, but they were part of an extraordinarily abnormal doping effort. WADA has been bringing a dull knife to a gunfight.
Perhaps this will all end with Russia being sanctioned in the manner that WADA’S committee is now advising. Perhaps the eventual punishment will be unsparing. Perhaps, but we have been here before.
How did that go?