Ex-Russia doping boss was planning book before death
MOSCOW: The former executive director of the Russian anti-doping agency planned to write a book on drug use in sports shortly before his sudden death, a former colleague and Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper reported Sunday.
Sunday Times sportswriter David Walsh, renowned for his coverage of cycling champion Lance Armstrong’s doping, reported that Kama ev wrote to him in November offering to reveal information on doping covering the last three decades since Kamaev began work for a “secret lab” in the Soviet Union.
Kamaev’s former boss at the RUSADA agency, Ramil Khabriev, told Russia’s Tass agency that Kamaev planned a book but abandoned it because an “American publisher” had demanded too much influence over its contents.
Kamaev died February 14, aged 52, of what the Russian anti-doping agency called a “massive heart attack.”
In Walsh’s account, Kamaev was quick to contact The Sunday Times after a World Anti-Doping Agency commission accused RUSADA of helping to cover up doping by top Russian athletes as part of a systematic, state-spon- sored program of drug use.
According to the newspaper, Kamaev said he had collected unpublished “actual documents, including confidential sources, regarding the development of performance enhancing drugs and medicine in sport,” plus communications with the Russian Sports Ministry and International Olympic Committee. It is not clear whether Kamaev ever provided any documents.
Walsh wrote that Kamaev first made contact on Nov. 21, three days after WADA declared RUSADA non-compliant, effectively shutting down its operations. Kamaev remained at RUSADA until December before resigning.
Walsh said that Kamaev wanted him to be his co-author but that the book plans did not proceed further.