Report puts Russia on the meddle stand

Happy Olympics! You thought the Games weren’t until next summer in Rio? Think again.

This week’s blockbuster report about doping in Russia linked to officials at the highest level gets the Olympic season started. With the very real possibility that Russia could be barred from the 2016 Rio Olympics.

The details sound like something out of a John le Carré novel: espionage and intrigue. The report by an independent commission of the World AntiDoping Agency tells of secret police posing as staff at a key laboratory, of tapped phones and bugged rooms. Of 1,417 test samples destroyed before a WADA investigating team arrived. About doping-control officials being bribed and intimidated into ignoring protocol. About athletes having to pay extortion fees, or using false identities so that they wouldn’t be identified for random testing.

It all seems very back to the future, reminiscent of East German systematic doping. Except that doping has never gone away. It exists everywhere in sports, including right here in our country.

The report exacerbates tensions between Russia and the West, which are already high. Russia has fallen back on its usual defense: These trumpedup allegations are being used simply to shame Russia.

If Russia is banned from competing in Rio, as many are urging, it will be a huge blow to the country and the Putin government, which spent $51 billion to host the Sochi Winter Olympics last year.

Russia finished fourth in the 2012 London Olympics, with 18 of its 82 medals won in track and field. Now those winners might be stripped of their medals. The scandal also threatens to ensnare the 2018 Russian World Cup: The current minister of sport, who is accused in the report, is also on the World Cup organizing committee.

Sebastian Coe, chairman of the London Olympics and now president of IAAF, track’s governing body, has asked Russia to respond and hasn’t ruled out a suspension. But many IAAF officials are implicated in the scandal as well, so good luck with that. The real race: Who will win the competition for most corrupt? FIFA or the IOC and the governing bodies of its various sports?

Let the Games begin!