The task facing athletics’ world governing body, the IAAF, as it considers whether to lift the ban on Russia, will become even more difficult as new evidence will be revealed this evening that shows the country’s old doping culture has not gone away. ARD, Germany’s national television channel, will broadcast a damning report into the current state of Russian athletics.
The report could not be more timely. The IAAF Council has a two-day meeting in Monte Carlo on Thursday and Friday, when it will have a progress update from the taskforce set up to monitor the changes that Russian athletics has vowed to make, in time for its team to compete at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in August.
Under its chairman, the Norwegian anti-doping expert Rune Andersen, the taskforce has made multiple visits to Moscow to speak with those implementing change in Russia. According to a number of sources, it has not been totally convinced by what it has seen and heard in Moscow. Even before this evening’s report from ARD, the taskforce was expected to tell the IAAF Council that it could not yet recommend the reintegration of Russia into the athletics family.
After this evening’s report, it is likely that any remaining doubt will be banished. The two principal allegations relate to two individuals, both coaches, who have been filmed and recorded in recent weeks. The first coach was named in the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (Wada) independent commission report as a supplier of banned performance-enhancing drugs to elite athletes. It was recommended that this coach and others be given a lifetime ban.
He was provisionally suspended, and the German report shows this coach still working with elite athletes in his home city, as if nothing had happened. Russian athletics officials will be embarrassed by the footage.
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The second major revelation is an undercover interview with a man who was identified to German TV investigators as the successor to Sergey Portugalov. During the years of state-supported doping, Portugalov was head of Russia’s medical commission and an adviser on and supplier of performance-enhancing drugs. Wada’s independent commission recommended that he, too, should be given a lifetime ban.
But at the Russian national championships 11 days ago, undercover journalists working for ARD were introduced to the man now doing the job that Portugalov once did. They met him at the championships and were able to buy from him banned performance-enhancing drugs. According to ARD’s report, many elite athletes in Russia are working with the coach.
Taskforce leader Anderson may secretly welcome the latest ARD report, as it confirms the view within his committee that while Russia has talked about its willingness to change and brought in new personnel to replace discredited former officials, much of the old culture remains. Its recommendation that the suspension of the Russian federation remain in place is likely to be more easily accepted after tonight’s broadcast.
After the publication of the first part of the Wada independent commission report last November, the Russian sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, said Vladimir Putin was now behind the effort to clean up Russian athletics. “He [Putin] has tasked us with doing everything and taking all necessary measures in co-operation with international organisations to create an anti-doping system that will be trusted by the world.”
Mutko also stated that he believed Russia would, within 60 days, be able to implement all the changes necessary to make the country’s athletics federation compliant with the Wada code. That deadline has passed and the German report will show that, though there has been much personnel change, there is no evidence of a serious change in the culture.
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Russia argues that to maintain the ban on its athletes is to punish the innocent as well as the guilty. This case has been made by the two-time Olympic gold medallist, pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva. She wrote an open letter to the IAAF, saying it would be “unjust and dishonest” to ban innocent Russians from Rio.
“I have carefully and strictly obeyed and continue to obey all the rules of the anti-doping campaign,” she wrote. “Yes, the situation that the Russian team is now in is sad. But I beg of you, don’t tar all athletes with the same brush.”
“Rodchenkov was part of a very corrupt system
Isinbayeva’s coach, Yevgeny Trofimov, was, however, critical of Yuliya Stepanova for her part in revealing the extent of doping in Russia. Mutko places his belief that Russian athletes will be in Rio on the machinations of international sporting politics. In the immediate aftermath of his country’s ban, he had many conversations with IAAF president Seb Coe and Wada president Craig Reedie.
It is also known that the IOC president, Thomas Bach, enjoys a good relationship with President Putin and that Bach will want Russia readmitted for Rio. The return may not be as straightforward as Bach imagines it will be. The taskforce is aware that Grigoriy Rodchenkov, former head of the discredited anti-doping laboratory in Moscow, is no longer in Russia. It is thought that the scientist has moved to the US.
He was part of a very corrupt system, one in which athletes and their coaches could bribe doping control officers and, if that failed, pay off someone at the anti-doping laboratory to make a positive test disappear. It is certain that if the sports ministry was involved in corrupting the anti-doping system, Rodchenkov would have known about it.
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Reliable sources say Rodchenkov is working on a film about what he saw during his time at the lab. If it were to be released before Rio, it would have the potential to make any reinstatement of Russia look like a very bad decision.
Andersen and his committee have their reputations to think about; hence they will advise the IAAF Council to leave the ban in place, at least until they find out more. The pressure will then come from the IOC and other places. For Lord Coe, the defining test of his presidency comes in the first year of his reign.
