By PETER BERLIN
If Moscow can invade
Crimea and get away with it, then it can cheat to win Olympic medals.
The Olympic jamboree starts Friday in Rio de Janeiro. In the run-up to
the Games, as the organizers scrambled to iron out all the traditional
last-minute snags, they faced a thorny social problem: Should we invite the
druggies to our party?
Less than three weeks before the start of the Olympics, the World
Anti-Doping Agency urged a total ban on Russian
participation. WADA released a report that it claimed corroborated
“state-sponsored subversion of anti-doping processes.” The highlight was a
scheme to cheat drug testers at the Sochi Winter Olympics — an example, it
said, of Russia’s breathtaking contempt for international rules.
Vladimir Putin sincerely believes the rest of the world is just as cynical
and corrupt as he is but that it simply doesn’t have the guts to
acknowledge it. The Olympic authorities’ confused and timid reaction to WADA’s
report suggests that the Russians can hope to act badly
and bluster their way out of paying a heavy price — as they
have so many times before.
In January 2014, the Brookings Institution addressed a memo to U.S.
President Barack Obama warning that Russia, freed from the threat of a
potential boycott, would start misbehaving after the Sochi Games wrapped up.
True to form, Russia annexed Crimea in March, less than a month after the Games
ended. Shortly afterward, they moved into eastern Ukraine.
In the end, few Russians who were not already banned will miss the Games.
Just as Russian-backed militias are still in Donetsk, so Russian athletes will
be in Rio.
* * *
Like his Soviet predecessors, Putin sees sport as a
propaganda tool. He wants to make Russia great again. And big wins in
the international sporting arena would give off the impression that
he is succeeding.
Centrally organized Russian doping goes back to 1952 when the old Soviet
Union first deigned to compete in the Olympics. Under Putin, Russia has built a
state-sponsored doping system on steroids.
The problem for the Russians is that anti-doping tests had been vastly
improved. By the start of the decade, Russian athletes were testing positive at
an eye-catching rate. Russia responded by trying to beat the system and to cow,
subvert or buy officials.
So complex was the Russian doping conspiracy that it became difficult to
keep everyone in line. Former officials of RUSADA, the Russian anti-doping
agency, began squealing to the Western media. In 2014, Vitaly Stepanov appeared
in a German documentary describing state-sponsored doping. WADA investigated.
Its report, in November 2015, focused on Russian doping in track and field —
not a Winter Olympic sport. It found that the Russians had destroyed some 1,400
positive samples and bribed officials of track and field’s governing body, the
IAAF, to ignore positive tests. It also detected the hand of the FSB, the
successor to the KGB.
In May, Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of the drug testing lab in
Sochi who fled Russia, told his tale to the New York Times.
At the 2014 Winter Games, testing was conducted in Russian labs, in Sochi and
Moscow, but the hosts had to find a way to deceive the latest WADA weapon:
neutral observers.
The FSB came up with a scheme that suggests its agents may have
watched too many “Mission Impossible” movies. It drilled holes in the wall
of the room where samples were stored and devised a system for replacing the
seals on the bottles. Agents dressed as plumbers switched bottles at night.
Senior figures in Moscow would decide whether to replace the dirty samples with
clean ones or to hang the athlete out to dry. They communicated their choice
with code words.
WADA again launched an inquiry, this time under a Canadian law professor,
Richard McLaren, who reported that “the forensic
evidence corroborates what Rodchenkov was saying.” WADA was unequivocal. Russia
should be banned from Rio.
But the International Olympic Committee equivocated. In the face
of overwhelming evidence that Russia had deliberately and systematically broken
the rules, the IOC could not bring itself to pull the trigger.
The committee and its member federations include senior Russian
officials who face political pressure from Russia. It is likely that not all of
the IOC’s paymasters were united behind a Russian ban. The sponsors have
business in Russia. And for national broadcasters, a Russian baddie in lane 6
makes for better TV.
The IOC also had legal and ethical concerns about banning athletes who had
never tested positive. They would be punishing the innocent. The IOC also
feared a challenge in the courts. They took legal advice and then ran for the
hills.
Thomas Bach, the president of the IOC, had previously talked of removing sports
federations’ control of drug-testing because they could not be trusted to
take tough decisions.
Now, Bach refused to make a tough decision. After WADA called for a ban, Bach
passed the buck to individual sports federations. Several began rubber-stamping
Russian athletes at once.
After Bach backed down he was razzed by German tabloid Bild. It ran a
picture of Bach under the headline: “Putin’s Poodle.”
The Russian government reiterated its opposition
to doping and promised to root out the guilty while insisting
others cheat as much, or more, than they do. The Kremlin argued that the
accusations were politically motivated.
Rodchenkov, the Russians say, was a doping profiteer who bought drugs in
the U.S. and sold them to athletes. He switched samples in Sochi to cover his
tracks, they claim.
It hardly matters. Rodchenkov was telling the truth, but even though Russia
was caught breaking the international rules in a systematic and premeditated
fashion, the IOC could not find the unity to push back.
It’s become a familiar story. Just as Russia can bomb Syria or occupy
Crimea, it can corrupt the Olympics. And it can count on a response that is
long on words and short on action.
Peter Berlin covered global soccer for 20 years for the Financial Times and
then theInternational Herald Tribune. He is now a freelance journalist
covering soccer for, among others, Sports Illustrated.
No comments:
Post a Comment