Our athletes were clean when they had to clean be — washed away the evidence!
IHAVE held some unorthodox views about doping that are now considered pure evil. It is assumed that sport doping is harmful but the science doesn’t bear that out. You might read that a weightlifter died young and was ‘a heavy steroid user for years’, but if he was over-dosing on steroids, he was probably also engaging in an abusive diet and training regimen. A lot of things can kill you, other than sports drugs in lethal doses.
I understand that in some countries there is a stigma associated with using steroids but that was never the case in Russia. Synthetic steroids have advanced like any other technology — they have become less harmful and more efficient as we have learned which ones to use, how to administer them and what they can accomplish safely.
Training at the Olympic level puts significant strain on the body. Steroids reduce fatigue and trauma and can also help muscles recover more quickly. I am not aware of any studies concluding that these substances are harmful in moderate dosages and I know plenty of athletes who used them for years and have lived long and healthy lives.
Let me advance another controversial argument cited by proponents of doping: it brings equality. Some athletes are genetically gifted and can get to the top of their sport with natural training techniques. Meanwhile, an athlete who seems unpromising can, after a modest doping regimen, show huge progress in developing skills and stamina, progressing to the point where he or she can challenge visibly stronger rivals. An average athlete might have more room for development and be more dedicated than the ‘natural’ competitor. I’ve often seen late bloomers benefit from doping.
If sport was ‘clean’ that would be a reverse handicap, favouring naturally gifted athletes over their less advantaged rivals. Without doping there is no way to overcome the ability gap.
I disdain the notion of athletes being ‘clean’. WADA loves that word but its mission should really be to protect honest athletes.
Generally speaking, Soviet and Russian athletes were almost always clean when they had to be — meaning we managed to wash out the evidence of their doping schemes before allowing them to compete abroad. They were clean in the same way that a laundered shirt is clean — you wash dirty things to make them clean. Another symptom of our national doping bespredel (lawlessness) was a veritable epidemic of the use of EPO (the performanceenhancing peptide erythropoietin).
At the 2006 European Athletics Championships in Gothenburg, Russian athletes’ blood parameters were outrageous.
Viktor Chegin, the famous racewalking coach and part-time witch doctor, injected Olga Kaniskina, who won silver in the 20km walk. Her athlete biological passport revealed high haemoglobin and haematocrit counts, betraying EPO use. As a result, the All-Russian Athletics
Federation received a letter from Dr Gabriel Dollé (Medical Director of the IAAF) that sounded more like a cry for help: please curb your outrages and be civilised. We see all your tricks! But no one paid any attention.
Before the Beijing Games, Dollé had some suspicions about what Chegin and his race walkers were up to. After a pre-Olympic racewalking qualification event in Cheboksary, we analysed all the samples and found 18 positives — all EPO and all Russian race walkers. They were covered up.
Dollé dispatched another drugtester to Chegin’s base in Saransk, a Ukrainian who spoke Russian. His targets were (Olympic favourites) Kaniskina and Valery Borchin.
The Beijing Olympics were just a week away so this was the optimal time to inject a final dose of EPO. The Ukrainian managed to collect four urine samples, including from Kaniskina and Borchin, but Chegin wasn’t going to get burned a second time and activated an agent who detained the Ukrainian at Bryansk, close to the Russia–Ukraine border. He crossed the border but the urine samples did not. They were ‘arrested’ and kept in a locked room for three days at 90-degree temperatures. They arrived at the laboratory in Moscow in midAugust, accompanied by a letter from the Bryansk customs agents.
I telephoned Dollé, but he had already heard the news and closed the case — the chain of custody had been interrupted and the temperature storage parameters violated so the samples were useless.
He told me to destroy the bottles and I did.
A few days later, both Kaniskina and Borchin won Olympic gold medals in the
20km walking races. Yet another miracle — it was enough to make you a believer.