Last week Thursday, on the luxury tourist destination of the Seychelles, an archipelago of 115 islands located in the northern Indian Ocean about 1,000 miles off the coast of Kenya, one of the smallest countries in the world, the world of sport experienced one of the worst betrayals ever by a ruling body.
The occasion? An Executive Committee meeting of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to decide whether to readmit Russia to the international sporting arena following the world’s biggest ever doping scandal.
The shameful story was first broken on a German television documentary in December, 2014 which alleged that as many as 99 per cent of Russian athletes were guilty of doping. Following this revelation, a WADA Commission published an independent report in November, 2015 indicating state-sponsored doping of Russian track and field athletes. RUSADA, Russia’s Anti-Doping Agency was then declared non-compliant.
Grigory Rodchenkov, the former Moscow head of the anti-doping laboratory, now turned whistleblower, added further fuel to the inferno by declaring in May, 2016 that dozens of Russian athletes had cheated at the 2014 Winter Olympics held in Sochi, Russia.
The McLaren Report, prepared by Canadian Richard McLaren, a law professor, and released in July 2016 revealed that a Government-backed doping programme had been in place for four years for most of the summer and winter sports.
It is prudent to note here that the Inter-national Olympic Committee (IOC) chose to avoid imposing the WADA recommended blanket ban on Russian athletes competing at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, but instead referred the decision to individual sporting federations. The International Association Athletics Federations (IAAF) and the International Weightlifting Federation were the only two bodies to issue complete bans of Russian athletes, as seven other federations including cycling and wrestling issued partial bans, while fifteen other international organisations, including boxing, judo and shooting did not ban any competitors. Thus, 271 Russian athletes out of the 389 selected were allowed to compete at Rio.
In December 2016, WADA published the second part of the McLaren Report which concluded that one thousand (1,000) athletes had benefitted from the state-sponsored doping programme. RUSADA and the Russian sport federations were then given a list of criteria to complete before they could be re-instated on the world stage.
In February of this year, Russia was banned by the IOC from competing in the Winter Olympics in South Korea, but 169 athletes who were able to prove that they ‘were clean’ were allowed to compete under a neutral flag.
Fast forward to June of this year, when WADA, who had been complaining that the Russian anti-doping reforms were not happening fast enough, wrote to the Russians offering a compromise solution to the two outstanding criteria still to be met for RUSADA’s reinstatement, their public acceptance of the findings of the 2016 McLaren Report and the granting of access to Moscow’s anti-doping laboratory and the provision of data for hundreds of outstanding drug cases.
The Russians have all along denied that there was a state-sponsored doping programme and have continued to deny access to and have retained full control of the Moscow laboratory.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on the 15th of this month revealed the damning news that WADA’s President Sir Craig Reedie, an IOC Member, and its Director General Olivier Niggli had written to the Russian Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov suggesting, according to the letter, “a very modest change in wording,” with only “certain individuals to blame” to satisfy the first condition, while for the latter, WADA’s power duo requested access “only to samples which have been identified by the raw data as being true adverse analytical findings. This number is likely to be very limited…”
Kolobkov, in a written response on the 13th September, agreed with the proposal in the hope that WADA “will perform its undertaking and re-instate the compliance of Rusada at the next meeting of the Executive Committee…” Kolobkov had nothing to worry about as the vote in favour of the motion was 9 to 2, with one abstention, as all six IOC members on the committee said aye.
WADA’s decision has been labelled “the greatest treachery to clean athletes in Olympic history” by one of Rodchenkov’s lawyers. McLaren, obviously not happy with WADA’s decision opined, “Politics is dictating this decision. The Russians didn’t accept the conditions so why will they accept the new ones. The Russians drafted the new ones, so they determined their own re-entry rules and the power to interpret them. They have all the discretion and escapes. WADA has lost leverage.”
As athletes’ groups and national anti-doping bodies the world over responded in outrage and anger to WADA’s betrayal, former head of WADA from 2003 to 2016, David Howman noted, “WADA has gone from an organization that cared about clean athletes to one that cares about international federations that have not being able to stage events in Russia: it’s money over principle. That is quite a difference, quite a swing, from what WADA once was.”
The IAAF and the International Paralympic Committee, who have their own criteria for reinstatement are still investigating the Russians and their respective task forces will report later in the year.
Thirteen national anti-doping bodies including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and the UK expressed dismay over WADA’s shifting of the goalposts and “sending a message to the world that doping is tolerated.”
In the long run, the WADA decision on Seychelles will have more consequences than a positive drug test for an athlete.