From Russia with dope

09 December 2014 - 09:18 By Doctor Know: Ross Tucker
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Ninety-nine percent: that's the staggering, depressing percentage of Russian Olympic athletes alleged to be involved in a systemic, multisport doping cover-up by a German investigative report last week.

Briefly, pursuing evidence provided by two whisteblowers from inside the Russian sporting system, journalist Hajo Seppelt uncovered a network of corruption so deep that even the governing body of athletics, the IAAF, is implicated in covering up and facilitating doping and positive test evasion.

The cover-up runs from the top down, with coaches and officials providing aspiring athletes with drugs. With the co-operation of the Russian anti-doping agency, and even the Russian ministry, doping was covered up with a complex system of providing clean urine samples to replace "dirty" ones, false names to avoid detection during travel, and even sacrificial lambs - lesser-known athletes whose positive tests were revealed to create a veneer of respectability about Russian sport.

The scandal affects South African athletics directly, since one of the marquee names implicated in the investigation is Mariya Savinova, who won the Olympic 800m title in London, beating our own Caster Semenya, who, for all her troubles since, may well be the rightful Olympic champion, a sobering thought for the bigger picture. How many more athletes have been denied by systemic cheating?

It's tempting to dismiss this as an isolated incident of a corrupt government organisation who are willing to break the rules for a sporting advantage. Historians of sport can point to the East German system of the 1970s and 1980s. Or more recently to Lance Armstrong's US Postal Service team at the Tour de France, hyperbolically described as "the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen".

The Russian scandal of 2014 (and sadly, probably many years before) dwarfs that in scale. And while we may want to leave these unsavoury accusations behind the shadowy remnants of the Iron Curtain, there are a number of reasons why we cannot.

First, even if the estimated 99% is twice as high as the actual number of doped athletes, we must sit up and pay attention, because not a single Russian athlete failed a doping test at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. Only one failed a test at London 2012.

If doping is so pervasive, and testing cannot detect it, then where do we stand on clean sport?

Second, the report confirms what those involved in sport have long recognised - athletes rarely dope in isolation. Testing is by no means perfect, and there's truth in the idea that failing a test requires a lapse, an error, or simple stupidity.

However, the testing process is now good enough that, without systemic support, the net eventually closes. The Russian scandal reveals that systemic support exists and that is extremely worrying.

Third, the Russian system lasted as long as it did because of a culture that accepted that doping was the only way to win. Why would such a culture be exclusive to Russia? And if doping has powerful effects on performance, and Russians are not winning all the medals, then what does it say about other nations and the chances they, too, are doping?

Finally, the investigation revealed that the two whistleblowers approached the World Anti-Doping Agency, but that they had limited powers to intervene - their only response is to let the sport's governing bodies know. In other words, the highest anti-doping body has to pass information on to the very organisations complicit in doping. You can see the catch-22 here.

It creates a confused, toothless system, where the conflict of interests, combined with ineffective powers from the top, mean that doping is, sadly, worth the risk.

Until external agencies have the power to ban entire nations from Olympic Games, or even sports, then doping will continue, not because of immoral athletes, but rather because the athletes themselves are reduced to weapons in a much larger battle.

In the words of the Russian athletics president in response to the allegations: These are "a pack of lies". Sadly, the same may be said of elite sport if things do not change.

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