‘Smoking gun’ aimed at Russia
Aleaked report outlines ‘‘stunning deception’’ to try and hide yet more doping of Russian athletes immediately after the country was allowed to resume competition in top-level events.
The report, obtained by Sunday News, points to a ‘‘smoking gun’’ which investigators say proves Russian cheating just as anti-doping bosses are deciding on Russia’s participation at next year’s Tokyo Olympics.
Wada’s executive committee will meet in Lausanne tomorrow to make a determination on sanctions imposed on Russia after an investigation found clear evidence that data from its Moscow laboratory had been tampered with.
The agency’s compliance review committee (CRC) has recommended Russia be banned from international competition for the next four years. If the executive committee accepts those recommendations, Russia will have no formal presence as a nation at next year’s Tokyo Olympics or the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing. However, Russian athletes would be permitted to compete as ‘‘neutral’’ athletes.
To many in the international sports community, those sanctions do not go far enough.
Wada is facing mounting pressure from sports leaders, including New Zealand anti-doping chief Nick Paterson, to impose a blanket ban on Russia.
Drug Free Sport NZ chief executive
Those calls are likely to grow louder as the details of the sheer scale of Russia’s ongoing corruption come to light.
The Sunday News has obtained copies of the confidential 26-page report compiled by the CRC, and the complete findings of the investigation carried out by Wada’s intelligence and investigations team.
The leaked documents lay out how laboratory staff manipulated the data, deleted files and even fabricated evidence.
According to the report, the manipulation of data had ‘‘materially prejudiced the ability to pursue’’ 145 of the 298 athletes identified in the ‘target group’ for suspected anti-doping rule violations.
A further aggravating factor Wada bosses need to consider is the planting of false evidence. Investigators uncovered internal messages in the laboratory information management system (LIMS) had been fabricated to try and implicate whistleblower Dr Grigory Rodchenkov in a
‘‘We are letting our clean athletes down if such disregard and disrespect for Wada’s authority and rules isn’t appropriately punished.’’ Nick Paterson
criminal conspiracy to extort money from athletes.
‘‘The fabricated, modified and deleted forum messages are a stunning deception. They are the figurative ‘smoking gun’. Moreover their existence demonstrates intent and provides a lens through which the totality of manipulations within the Moscow Data should be observed,’’ the report states.
Investigators determined the deletions and alterations were made between November 25, 2018, and January 10, 2019 – three months after the Russian Antidoping Agency (Rusada) had been reinstated and ordered to turn over the data.
The decision to reinstate Rusada in September last year – despite having failed to meet a strict set of criteria laid out in the ‘‘roadmap to compliance’’ – was widely condemned. Critics accused Wada president Sir Craig Reedie of putting business and political interests ahead of those of clean athletes.
It’s against that backdrop that, as D-Day looms, athlete bodies, integrity experts and sports leaders are rallying to implore the Wada executive to this time stand up to Russia’s repeated flouting of the rules.
Paterson, the chief executive of Drug Free Sport NZ, is among those calling on Wada to draw a line under the five-year saga.
‘‘We are letting our clean athletes down if such disregard and disrespect for Wada’s authority and rules isn’t appropriately punished,’’ Paterson said.
‘‘It is worth noting the [CRC] recommendations leave open the possibility of Russian athletes and coaches participating ‘‘neutrally’’ in Tokyo if they can show they are clean. But without the original, unaltered lab data, how will we ever really know?’’
Paterson’s US counterpart, Travis Tygart, a critic of Wada’s leadership in recent years, was similarly unequivocal.
‘‘Wada must stand up to this fraudulent and bullying behaviour as the rules and Olympic values demand,’’ Tygart told the BBC.
It is expected Russia will appeal any punishment to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which will have the final say on a scandal that is set to overshadow the build-up to Tokyo 2020.
A late handball penalty, awarded with help from the video assistant referee, lifted the Wellington Phoenix to a 2-1 win over Western Sydney Wanderers, at Eden Park last night.
Pirmin Schwegler didn’t know a lot about the shot from Ulises Davila that struck him, but his arm was away from his body, and that was good enough for referee Daniel Elder as he watched a replay at the side of the pitch after missing the incident first time around.
Davila was composed from the spot, waiting while several Wanderers complained, then putting the ball in the back of the net for his sixth goal of the season.
Jaushua Sotirio’s goal against his former club early in the second half had been cancelled out by Nicolai Muller with 25 minutes to play.
With the win – their third in a row – the Phoenix moved up to fourth on the A-League ladder, leapfrogging their opponents – and it was a big result given that they were second best for large stretches of the match, before coming on strong at the end.
The two teams entered this one in vastly different form – the Phoenix unbeaten in three, the Wanderers winless in four – but you would have thought the hosts were struggling to win and the visitors were flying high on the evidence on display in the first half. Despite everyone saying they were full of confidence during the week, there were few signs that that was really the case for the Phoenix as the match began – they struggled to string three passes together at times, giving up possession over and over again.
The Wanderers were on the front foot from the off, with Bruce Kamau shooting wide after five minutes, when a slip by Reno Piscopo – one of several on the Eden Park surface – allowed them to get into the Phoenix area.
Goalkeeper Stefan Marinovic was the busiest of the Phoenix players in the first half, coming off his line smartly in the eighth minute to make a reflex save as Kwame Yeboah went in on goal after a one-two with Mitch Duke.
Muller spurned an excellent chance to put the visitors ahead 10 minutes in, poking wide after Duke got in behind down the left, and later forced Marinovic to dive at full stretch to keep him out.
With the Phoenix coming up empty on attack, the final bit of excitement for the half came when Marinovic made his third big stop of the period, getting in the way of a powerful Matthew Jurman header at a corner on the half-hour mark.
Alex Rufer went down with an injury to his left knee five minutes before the break, and was replaced by Cam Devlin in central midfield.
It took less than two minutes after the restart for the Phoenix to take the lead – with a bit of class that was nowhere to be seen in the opening 45min.
Sotirio’s first goal for the club was one to remember – a neat chip over Daniel Lopar made possible by David Ball, who stuck out a leg and flicked the ball on as the former Wanderers player made a run in behind.
An equaliser seemed inevitable, given the visitors’ early