Tokyo won’t be ‘sabotaged’, says drugs chief
TOKYO: Japan’s anti-doping chief has said that that Russia’s athletes should be kicked out of the Rio Olympics — and vowed round-the-clock work to make sure the Tokyo Games won’t be “sabotaged” by drugs cheats.
Track and field’s world governing body the IAAF last month voted to suspend Russia’s athletics federation after the publication of a World AntiDoping Agency (Wada) report that alleged systematic “state-sponsored” drug use.
The country faces exclusion from Rio if not declared compliant but the Japan Anti-Doping Agency’s chief executive officer Shin Asakawa believes the IAAF needs to take a harder line as a deterrent and declared that Jada would work overtime to help ensure a clean Tokyo Olympics in 2020.
“I think we need to be very tough on Russia,” Asakawa said in an interview at the Tokyo headquarters of Jada, which operates on an annual budget of some US$10 million.
“Nobody wants to see an Olympics where everyone is suspicious of the results,” Asakawa said.
“The purpose of the anti-doping movement is to catch cheats but also to demonstrate that performances are real.
“British newspapers ran headlines saying the London Olympics were sabotaged by Russia, and you can understand those sentiments.
“We have five years and many sleepless nights to make sure that doesn’t happen,” he added.
“We are confident of a clean Tokyo 2020. But if we can’t promise athletes we can banish these doping scandals then we’ve lost before the starting gun goes off.”
He said there was too little time left for Russian athletics to prove it had put its house in order over doping.
“Can people who were working against the system turn back and pull in the same direction in time [for Rio]? I think it’s very difficult.
“From an anti-doping perspective I don’t think Russian athletes should take part in Rio,” he added.
“But it’s hard to ignore calls from Russian athletes protesting their innocence, such as [Yelena] Isinbayeva. That poses a dilemma for [IAAF president] Sebastian Coe.”
With Tokyo hosting the 2020 Olympics, Jada’s role in fighting the drug cheats is set to come under increasing scrutiny and much work still needs to be done, a point underlined earlier this week when Kenyan athletics chief Isaiah Kiplagat and two subordinates were suspended.