What we know about Russian doping, potential Olympic ban
Russia is not banned from competing in Rio, but it still could be. Its track and field team won’t be there, although that’s being challenged. Russians who might go to the Olympics next month would compete as neutral athletes or under their own flag, depending on who wins the power struggle between the track federation and Olympic officials.
With less than three weeks until the Rio Games open on August 5, the fallout from a series of revelations of doping in Russian sport has raised as many questions as answers. To help you sort them all out, here’s what we know:
DOPING WAS EXTENSIVE:
A report released Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren confirmed allegations of doping at the Sochi Olympics. The World Anti-Doping Agency tasked McLaren with investigating the allegations and he uncovered a wider system of doping of Russian athletes and subversion of anti-doping rules that reached the highest levels of Russian sport.
McLaren’s report detailed a system in which the Ministry of Sport, Center of Sports Preparation of the National Teams of Russia (CSP), the Federal Security Service (FSB) and labs in Moscow and Sochi worked together to cover up positive tests from 2011 until August 2015.
That system, which the McLaren report termed the Disappearing Positive Methodology, affected virtually all of Russian sport as the report detailed covered-up tests in 29 Olympic sports plus Paralympic sport.
ATHLETICS INVESTIGATION PAVED WAY:
An independent commission investigated Russia in 2015, announcing in November that it had found extensive doping in track and field. Several athletes and coaches were suspended or banned, the International Association of Athletics Federations barred Russia from competing internationally and WADA declared the Moscow lab and the Russian Anti-Doping Agency non-compliant with its code.
Though the independent commission report suggested doping extended beyond athletics, WADA resisted calls from athletes and anti-doping officials to investigate Russia further and did not launch a second investigation until more allegations came to light in reporting from 60 Minutes and The New
York Times in May.
SOCHI FINDINGS:
McLaren’s report confirmed the stories from those news outlets in which Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov outlined how Russians doped during the Olympics and avoided testing positive for banned substances.
Rodchenkov told The New York Times that he doped Russian athletes and, with the help of the FSB agent, replaced dirty urine with clean urine in sample bottles previously thought to be tamper proof. McLaren’s investigation found those bottles had been tampered with in an effort to protect a list of doped Russian athletes competing in Sochi.
THE RESPONSE:
Russia has suspended many of the officials implicated in the McLaren report. Athletes, anti-doping officials and WADA itself have called for a total ban of Russia for the Rio Olympics.
IOC president Thomas Bach called the findings “a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sports and on the Olympic Games,” and vowed the IOC would not hesitate to “take the toughest sanctions” against implicated individuals and organizations.
RUSSIA FACING IOC BAN:
The IOC didn’t act on Tuesday, but it still might. Its executive board met via teleconference and said it “will explore the legal options with regard to a collective ban of all Russian athletes for the Olympic Games 2016 versus the right to individual justice.”
It is waiting on an arbitration decision later this week that could impact its legal ability to ban the country.
It also made some interim measures, opening an investigation into Russian officials implicated in the McLaren report and preventing them from being accredited for the Rio Games.
It will re-test samples and investigate all Russians competing in Sochi, along with their coaches, officials and support staff.
WHAT’S NEXT:
The IOC is waiting for a decision from the Court of Arbitration for Sport expected on Thursday. That court is hearing a challenge to the IAAF’s ban of the track and field team that was brought by the Russian Olympic Committee and 68 athletes.
In banning the country last month, the IAAF changed its rules to allow it to grant exceptional eligibility to Russian athletes who have been subject to effective anti-doping programs in other countries and could show they had not been tainted by the Russian system.
CAS’ decision could allow other international federations or the IOC to take the same approach of banning the Russians in a sport or as a country but creating exceptions for athletes who could demonstrate their anti-doping record.
THE FLAG:
Still unresolved is the issue of whom those athletes would compete for in Rio. The IAAF says they would be neutral athletes and not compete for Russia, while Bach says they would compete under the Russian flag. Already the IOC has allowed a 10-person refugee team to compete under its flag.
RESOLUTION:
Expect an answer on this soon. The Games open August 5, leaving little time for decisions from federations or the IOC and the legal challenges sure to follow.