AT 2.15pm today the world’s fastest athletes will explode off their blocks at the Olympic stadium in Beijing. Once this race to determine the fastest man was anticipated with excitement. Now it arouses conflicting emotions. For some there will be indifference. For many others there is a sense of betrayal because they no longer trust this sport, nor the people who should be policing it.
Should the American Justin Gatlin beat the Olympic champion Usain Bolt in today’s final, as many expect, the mess that world athletics has become will be seen in sharp focus. Gatlin has twice been banned for doping offences. He is now 33 and running faster than any sprinter his age has ever run.
Three days ago Sebastian Coe, president elect of the International Association of Athletics Federations, said he would feel queasy if Gatlin wins. Nine months ago Coe said he had “big problems” with Gatlin being on the shortlist for the IAAF’s Athlete of the Year. Since winning the presidential election on Wednesday, Coe’s position on Gatlin has apparently softened. “He should be accorded all respect wherever he finishes [in today’s final],” he said.
It is not the first time Coe has offered conflicting messages on doping issues. Last December he was asked about allegations, broadcast on German television, of widespread doping in Russian athletics. Coe responded that Russia, as an IAAF member, could be banned if it was proven that it ran an East Germany-style doping programme.
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He said: “We do have a category, a status we refer to as ‘in good standing’. A good standing is not just about paying your subs on time or being free from political interference. We had suspensions of federations for all sorts of reasons because the council decided that federation is not in good standing. Let’s just see where these reports [Wada and IAAF investigations into Russia] take us. This is a very, very difficult time for our sport.”
Ten weeks later, Coe seemed not so ready to wait for the reports. “Russia,” he said, “has been through a difficult time but it must be helped to set up a clean sports machine.” He added that the IAAF leadership “is about making sure that those federations who do have these challenges are not isolated or banned as some people have suggested. People are saying ‘we must kick these federations out of sport’. No, actually, good presidencies can make sure we help them create an environment and systems with integrity and trust. That is our responsibility as well.”
There is considerable evidence that the Russian Athletics Foundation [RAF] has systematically doped its athletes through its coaches, its medical officer, through complicity with the national anti-doping agency [Rusada] and the national anti-doping laboratory. If the evidence is substantiated there would be a strong case for the Russian federation being banned in the way that athletes are.
Allegations of Russia’s widespread doping, first broadcast by the German station ARD, have led to separate investigations by the independent commission of the World Anti-Doping Agency, and by the IAAF’s ethics commission. They are expected to deliver their reports in the autumn. According to sources close to the Wada investigation, its report has the potential to do for Russian athletics what the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s 200-page reasoned decision did for Lance Armstrong’s US Postal cycling team.
At these world championships in Beijing, you will not see the famed Russian race-walking coach Viktor Chegin, whose athletes have been dominant at the Olympics and at world championships. Twenty-five of those athletes have been sanctioned for doping violations, and suspicions of wrongdoing stretch back to 2008.
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A year ago Chegin was not allowed to travel with the team to the European championships because so many of his athletes had tested positive, but he was permitted to continue coaching inside Russia. According to sources, Wada conducted out-of-competition tests on 10 Chegin athletes this year and came up with six positives. Last month Chegin was fired. Some of his “champions” have already been stripped of medals. Others will follow.
Russia’s reaction has been to remove some members of its athletic establishment. As well as Chegin, Valentin Balakhnichev has been replaced as president of the federation. He also stepped down as IAAF treasurer pending the outcome of ongoing investigations. Valentin Maslakov resigned as Russia’s head coach, a decision that Balakhnichev described as “manly”.
There is also evidence that former chief medical advisor Sergey Portugalov, leading coaches Alexei Melnikov and Vladimir Kazarin, and the London Olympic 800m champion Mariya Savinova, were involved in doping. Much of the non-analytical evidence was provided by whistleblowers Vitaly Stepanov and his wife, Yulia.
Stepanov worked for the Russian anti-doping agency for three years and has detailed the corruption that existed in the agency during his time. Top athletes, he alleged, were allowed to compete “dirty” at the Russian national championships and expected to be clean in international competition.
Stepanova provided evidence against her former coaches Vladimir Mokhnev, Melnikov and Vladimir Kazarin. She offered details on how she was encouraged to dope from the beginning of her career and how she was supported once she crossed the line into cheating. She and her husband now live in hiding in western Europe.
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Through the last decade, Russia has enjoyed much success on the track, and at the last world championships won more gold medals than the US. Former head coach Maslakov does not deny what went on but argues his country was no different to others. “Everyone is the same, everyone is equal. Russia is not the leader in this area.” This was the argument used to convince Russian athletes that they had to dope. The Russian sport minister, Vitaly Mutko, does not believe his country did much wrong. “We’ve played by the general rules all these years,” he said.
This is not true. Russia played outside the rules and, through cheating, won many gold medals. Of course they were not the only country to cheat but they were flagrantly and systematically using doping products. They were very cynical and very successful.
This side of the old German Democratic Republic and its evil doping programme, there can never have been a stronger case for banning a federation. But president Coe, without seeing either the Wada or IAAF reports, does not think this is a good idea. Coe also told us that The Sunday Times and ARD had made “a declaration of war” by publishing data making clear the extent of cheating in his sport.
Coe also cited the $2m the IAAF spends on anti-doping as evidence of his organisation’s determination to fight cheating, forgetting that cycling, with a much smaller pool of elite athletes, spends more than four times as much.
Since they highlighted the extent of doping in Russia, the Stepanovs have, to use Coe’s words, been going through “a difficult time”. They have heard no support from those in charge of the IAAF, Coe included.
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In a letter to Wada, Yulia Stepanova wrote: “I understand that maybe the most that I can do is to share my story with you and continue living in Russian reality. It’s like, I live in Russia by Russian rules and the doping fighting is in Canada [Wada]. And Canada seems like a different planet at this point.”
Time will tell whether her pessimism was well founded.