HARRY XMAS
FIFA plan new doping probe into the hosts, but will it be compromised?
HARRY KANE is one goal away from breaking the record set by Alan Shearer in 1995 of 36 goals in a calendar year after his treble in Tottenham’s 3-0 win over Burnley yesterday put him level with the former Newcastle striker. Kane is also equal with Mohamed Salah as the Premier League’s top goalscorer,
FIFA have effectively promised they will investigate suspected Russian doping in football before the 2018 World Cup gets under way — which could decimate an already weak Russia national team.
It will also, inevitably, raise questions as to why the nation is being allowed to host the tournament.
With Russia 2018 chief Vitaly Mutko on the verge of being forced out of his position because of his life ban from the Olympics, over his role in an institutional and national doping conspiracy, FIFA’s pledge to i nvestigate football doping in t he new year is a significant breakthrough.
FIFA are to request that the World Anti-Doping Agency allow them priority access to new testing, which has been developed to establish beyond doubt whether Russian government security officials (FSB) tampered with sample bottles to ensure their sportsmen and women could take performance-enhancing drugs with impunity. The test can show whether bottles were opened illegally, which is an offence.
Winter sports have been prioritised for the new tests in anticipation of February’s Winter Olympics at PyeongChang, South Korea.
But Professor Richard McLaren, who investigated Russian doping f or WADA, has i dentified 34 football samples which ‘ might potentially have benefitted from manipulation’, including every member of Russia’s 2014 World Cup squad. FIFA want those suspect samples tested next month.
A spokesperson said: ‘FIFA has formally requested WADA to be given priority for this forensic analysis of stored samples. In its answer, WADA informed FIFA that the order of priority will be made by the IOC (International Olympic Committee) expert team. It is in FIFA’s interest that such procedures are finalised as early as possible.’
The pressure on experts to ensure football samples are prioritised means analysis would have to be completed swiftly and any charges or bans imposed prior to the finals.
Dick Pound, anti-doping expert and most senior IOC member, insists it can be done speedily, saying: ‘They have the data. It’s simple to determine whether or not you have a case of doping if you want to.’
If tests are found to have been manipulated it risks weakening an already poor Russia team, though for crediblity and integrity it seems impossible that FIFA can stall the analysis until after the World Cup.
A spokesperson said: ‘FIFA will continue working in close collaboration with WADA and exploring every possible avenue. Should t here be enough evidence to demonstrate an anti-doping rule violation by any athlete, FIFA will impose the appropriate sanction.’
Last week FIFA was forced to deny that the removal of their previous anti-doping expert, Professor Jiri Dvorak, was related to his own i nvestigations i nto doping in Russian football and said such claims were ‘ completely baseless’.
The departure of Professor Dvorak means the principal antidoping expert left working for FIFA is Martial Saugy, who worked as a consultant to the Sochi laboratory at the 2014 Winter Olympics.
That is when Russian anti-doping officers and government secret agents conspired to switch samples through a hole in the wall to ensure that their athletes could compete while on drugs and not be caught. Professor Saugy says he had no idea of the corruption taking place.
FIFA said Saugy is ‘neither a FIFA employee nor the principle antidoping expert at FIFA’. However, FIFA has not yet identified to The Mail on Sunday who their principal anti- doping expert is and who would oversee the Russia probe.
Saugy, who was a consultant for the Russia Anti- Doping Agency (RUSADA) at the corrupted Sochi Games, was also mentioned in WADA independent commission reports when 67 Russian doping samples, airlifted from the Moscow laboratory to Lausanne because WADA suspected corruption, were destroyed despite WADA being under the impression that the Lausanne lab had been instructed to retain them. Professor Saugy was director of t he Lausanne laboratory at that time.
After WADA’s independent commission criticised the role of the Lausanne lab in destroying the 67 samples, which Saugy claimed was normal protocol, the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), which has responsibility for the Lausanne lab, issued a statement reaffirming support of Saugy.
Last year Saugy moved from his role as head of the lab to set up an anti-doping consultancy at the University of Lausanne and one of its clients is FIFA, who list him as adviser to their medical committee.
In email correspondence, Saugy explained his new role to The MoS. ‘My role as scientific adviser at the medical committee includes general advice on policy in anti-doping for FIFA,’ he wrote. ‘The confidentiality agreement is crucial. I am not in a position to comment on the case I am working on with them.’
As for his role as consultant for the corrupted Sochi lab, he wrote: ‘My role was as a scientific consultant to the laboratory.
‘The contracts between my institution (CHUV) at the time and the laboratory of Moscow was managed by people working in the name of the Ministry of Sport in the fight against doping.
‘My principal contact there was Nat ali aZh el a nova, who was presented to me as head of both RUSADA and the lab of Moscow.’
Regarding the corruption, he added: ‘I was totally unaware about what happened behind the scene.’
Asked whether he felt retrospectively there was any possibility of a perceived conflict of interest arising from the fact that the Lausanne lab was being paid by the RUSADA/ Russian Ministry of Sport, whose officials had facilitated corruption, Saugy wrote: ‘By looking now, you may see it like that. But all that was done at the time was done openly and in complete transparency to WADA and the IOC.
‘At the time, I do not remember that WADA considered RUSADA as corrupted, because they would have warned me and not accepted that RUSADA would be involved in the testing of the Olympics, as was the case. Again, if it was a conflict of interest, WADA would have sanctioned me and the Lausanne lab.’