Canadian anti-doping boss praises Russia ban
Canadian agency had been advocating for action to stop systemic doping in Olympics
Canada’s anti-doping watchdog is delighted, and slightly taken aback, that the International Olympic Committee has finally banned Russia from an Olympic Games.
The IOC ruled Tuesday that Russia would not be allowed to compete as a nation at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.
Paul Melia, president and CEO for the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES), which oversees drug testing for Canadian athletes, says he is “pleasantly surprised” by the ban.
“We have been advocating for several months now for the IOC to take this action,” said Melia, from his Ottawa office Wednesday. The CCES, which just moved to a new location on Lancaster Road, has for years been championing the cause of clean and fair sport.
Melia, who writes a blog on the CCES website, likes to say the centre strives to “elevate the conscience of sport in Canada,” working on behalf of athletes, coaches and officials to promote values of inclusive and safe sport. The systematic doping involving Russian athletes over the past few years is the very antithesis of the CCES philosophy.
What sparked the IOC ban of Russia? The IOC’s own reports and the work conducted by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren on behalf of the World AntiDoping Agency helped turn the tide. Former athletes, including retired Canadian cross-country ski champion Beckie Scott, also brought pressure to bear on the IOC to do the right thing.
Melia called Scott a “true hero” in this story.
“Perhaps they (the IOC) read the public mood a bit better than they had in the past and realized the reasonable thing to do would be to impose a ban,” Melia said. “Not to do that might be playing with fire a little bit in terms of the public trust in the IOC and even the Olympic movement and its integrity.
“It’s never too late to do the right thing. They did that yesterday, with a few caveats.”
Canada has been at the forefront of the anti-doping story dating back to Ben Johnson’s positive test at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. That sparked years of introspection, the Dubin Inquiry and the start of the CCES. Out of this movement came a culture that fosters and takes pride in clean sport.
Melia pointed to the contrast in Russia’s approach to myriad positive drug tests. Denial, blame (especially of whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov), but no culture change.
After the Salt Lake City Olympics, a relatively poor performance by Canadian athletes led to further introspection and the development of the Own the Podium program leading up to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. Own the Podium pumped resources into training, coaching, competition and nutritional science. The result was a wildly successful Games in Vancouver.
In contrast, Melia said, Russia’s response to middling results in Vancouver was to invest in systematic doping to put on a show at home for the Sochi 2014 Olympics.
“They said, OK, let’s create a doping program,” Melia said. “Let’s beat the world anti-doping cause at every turn and use banned substances. They did that and won 33 medals.
“It’s an interesting contrast in approach.”
Russia plans to appeal the ban, and have fallen back on the familiar refrain that the West has it in for them.
Russian athletes who can prove to an independent panel they are clean will be allowed to compete in South Korea, but that will be difficult given anti-doping officers have only been in Russia for about a year and have not had access to many athletes in socalled “closed cities” in Russia.
Melia expects the final number of Russians allowed to compete, minus their country’s flag or anthem, will be small. Meanwhile, clean athletes the world over can breathe easier in their final weeks of training, knowing the playing field will be more level than in previous Olympics.
“McLaren comes out with his report — over a thousand Russian athletes implicated across 30 different sports, so if you’re an athlete who’s going to PyeongChang knowing the majority of Russian athletes were doping and you don’t have to compete against them, I think you would feel a lot better about that,” Melia said. “The IOC has your back.”
One compelling chapter still to unfold is the threatened boycott of the PyeongChang Olympics by the KHL, Russia’s top hockey league. Many of Canada’s top players outside the NHL compete in the KHL and are expected to be important players for Canada in these Games, given the NHL’s decision not to participate. According to IIHF rules, the KHL is bound to release its players for Olympic competition, but Russia might decide to make its own ruling on the matter.
“If that happened, the quality of the men’s ice hockey tournament in the Olympics, already significantly watered down without the NHL, would not be worth watching,” Melia said.
After the announced ban, Ilya Kovalchuk, a former NHL star now in the KHL, pleaded with Russian officials to allow hockey players to compete.