THE RUSSIANS AREN’T COMING
State-sanctioned doping has seen the country’s track and field athletes being banned from the Olympics
IT’S hard to imagine it: an Olympic Games without any Russian track and field stars. But come August this is going to be the strange scenario in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, when the 2016 Olympics kick off. Everybody knew it was the right thing to do but there were doubts about whether the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) would have the guts to do it. But experts say the sports body had no choice. With solid evidence showing that illegal doping is rife in Russian athletics there was no way the sports superpower could be allowed to compete on the world stage.
“This is a sad day for our sport,” says IAAF president and former British Olympic gold medallist Sebastian Coe. “Russian athletes could not credibly return to international competition without undermining the confidence of their competitors and the public.”
The decision is unprecedented. While countries have been barred from the Olympics because of political consider- ations – South Africa was banned from 1964 to 1988 because of apartheid – no country has ever been excluded because of doping concerns.
Doping is usually linked to individual athletes but with mounting evidence of a state-sanctioned doping programme designed to help Russian athletes take banned drugs without getting caught, a cloud of suspicion now hangs over its entire track and field team.
WARNING bells have been sounding for years. Not only were the Russians extremely gifted, they appeared superhuman. How was it possible that they could win so consistently? Despite repeated allegations of dodgy doping practices the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) continued to turn a blind eye.
But after German television channel ARD broadcast an explosive documentary in 2014 showing that Russian athletics was rotten to its core, the wheels of FAR LEFT: IAAF president Sebastian Coe announced the body’s historic decision to ban Russian track and field athletes from the Olympics. LEFT: Athlete Yulia Stepanova blew the whistle on Russian doping. justice slowly started turning. Late last year when Wada’s own investigation uncovered evidence of an elaborate government-run doping programme (YOU, 26 November 2015) the IAAF took the drastic step of suspending Russia’s trackand-field athletes from international competition, and now, following more allegations, this has been extended to an Olympic ban.
From tampering with urine samples to intimidating officials it seems Russia is willing to go to any lengths to up its medal count. A new report published by Wada paints a shocking picture of a country where doping is the norm rather than the exception and where doctors, coaches and laboratory staff are all aiding athletes in avoiding detection. The report says swopping out incriminating urine samples and encouraging athletes to imbibe steroids with liquor to mask the presence of drugs has been fairly standard practice since the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
And even as recently as this year, aware that they were under close surveillance, the country’s athletes and officials refused to toe the line. Between February and May there were 52 doping violations involving Russian athletes while 73 tests couldn’t be carried out because the sports stars failed to show up.
One athlete left the stadium during a race to avoid testers, while another had