HOW TO THINK ABOUT IT An internal chasm. Helleland wasn’t the only member of the organization to criticize RUSADA’s reinstatement. When the review panel issued its recommendation last week, it prompted the resignation of WADA member and Canadian Olympic skier Becky Scott. Also, seven members of the WADA Athlete Committee issued a statement decrying their agency’s move. Worth noting: WADA President Craig Reedie’s term is set to expire next year, and Helleland is one of the candidates to replace him. The whistleblowers. WADA’s saga with Russian doping is nothing new. Russian athlete Yulia Stepanova and her husband, Vitaly, who worked for RUSADA, first wrote to WADA in 2010 alleging a mass doping program. They never heard back, so they secretly recorded conversations with athletes, doctors and officials. After Stepanova was herself banned by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) for doping, she went public, disclosing the scale of Russia’s doping operation on German TV in 2014. In May 2016, Grigory Rodchenkov — a former head of Moscow’s anti-doping laboratory who helped develop the banned performance-enhancing substances used by thousands of Russian Olympians — confirmed WADA’s mass doping conclusions. Before this week’s vote, Rodchenkov wrote in USA Today that reinstatement would be “nothing short of a catastrophe for clean sport.” Now in U.S. witness protection, Rodchenkov was the subject of the Oscar-winning 2017 documentary, Icarus. McLaren vs. Schmid. Two reports with one key difference were at the center of the reinstatement decision: the McLaren report and the Schmid report. The former, released in 2016, unequivocally confirmed “the existence of widespread cheating through the use of doping substances,” and described methods like swapping clean urine samples through a hole in a wall. The second report, published in December 2017 by Samuel Schmid, disciplinary commission chair for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), reinforced those findings — but did not implicate either the state or the FSB, Russia’s principal security agency, as having knowledge of the cheating. One of the initial conditions for RUSADA reinstatement was for Russia to publicly accept the findings of the McLaren report, but a compromise reached this summer allowed Russia to acknowledge the less condemnatory Schmid report. Athletes speak out. Athletes and agencies in the U.S., U.K. and Canada have lashed out at WADA’s decision. “Frankly, it stinks to high heaven,” U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart said in a statement. Tygart also called for a complete overhaul of WADA’s executive structure. Prior to the vote, the U.K. Anti-Doping Athlete Commission penned a letter to WADA urging the agency to hold fast to the previously established roadmap to reinstatement, which included accepting the McLaren report and granting access to the Moscow lab. “Do not fail Clean Sport,” the athletes urged. Curiously, the IOC Athletes’ Commission announced it agreed “in principle” with WADA’s executive committee, but wanted to see a “clear process” and timeline for receiving and verifying the lab data. What does this mean for Russian athletes? It’s important to note that WADA’s vote reinstated RUSADA, not Russian athletes’ ability to compete under their flag in international competitions. The IAAF has not yet lifted its suspension on Russian athletes. It plans to reevaluate Russia’s status at its council meeting in Monaco in December. The reinstatement of RUSADA was one condition that had to be met. The others are that the Russian Athletics Federation (RUSAF) must pay for the costs the IAAF incurred for the doping scandal, and authorities must grant access to the Moscow lab by Dec. 31. |
