Long jumper, Darya Klishina, who trains in Miami, United States, is in a league of her own. Out of a team of 69, she is probably the only track and field athlete from Russia that will compete in Rio 2016. The other 68 have been banned from the Olympic Games starting August 5 in Brazil by the International Association of Athletics Federations over the use of banned drugs. The confirmation of their suspension by the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration for Sport is tangential to the damning report issued last week by independent investigator, Richard McLaren, of widespread doping by Russian athletes. It is disquieting that athletes will employ crooked means to win medals, something that is totally against the ideals of the Olympics.
McLaren’s investigations covered three major events – the London 2012 Games, the 2013 World Athletics Championships in Moscow and the Sochi 2014 Winter Games in Russia. The World Anti-Doping Agency ordered the investigations after Yuliya Stepanova, a Russian athlete, blew the whistle on massive doping in her country. The Canadian law professor confirmed the worst: a large-scale state-sponsored doping programme had occurred in Russia, dating back to the 2012 Olympics.
Cheating and doping belong to the dark side of sports, where success is seen as the ultimate for individuals, teams and their countries. Russia was said to have initiated a systematic state-sponsored doping shortly after its disastrous performance in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, where it placed 11th. Using its intelligence services and top sports officials, its deputy sports minister, Yuri Nagornyka, unilaterally determined the athletes that would be shielded from tests by international sport federations. According to McLaren, hundreds of steroid-tainted blood samples of such athletes were systematically substituted for clean samples provided by the state.
This way, Russia returned to contention in London 2012, finishing fourth with 79 medals. Two years later, as the host of Sochi, Russia finished on top with 33 medals. But an investigation after Russia topped the medals’ count in the 2013 World Athletics Championships in Moscow discovered widespread drug cheating. More portentous was the tactical cover-up by the state. Athletes from other countries are aggrieved that cheats are beating them to medals. “It’s a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sports and the Olympic Games,” International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, said of McLaren’s report. He is spot on.
But instead of banning Russian athletes outright from the Rio Games, the IOC directed each international sport federation to determine whether Russian athletes should compete in Rio or not. This is begging the question. The IOC is toying with the integrity of the Olympics. Cheats and rogue states should have no place in a sporting event.
It’s wrong for the IOC to be passing the buck; its half-measure is likely to generate more confusion, with the international weightlifting body going ahead to sanction weightlifters from Russia, Belarus, Bulgaria and Kazakhstan from appearing in Rio. The international swimming federation has equally expelled seven Russian swimmers. But Russian athletes could take up legal action. Yuliya Efimova, a swimmer, has said she would file a case against the IOC for excluding athletes who had already served a doping ban from Rio. Therefore, the international federations should resist the nudge of the IOC.
For centuries, athletes have used performance-enhancing drugs. Technology, which enables athletes to mask drugs in their system, has made things worse. Russia’s scandal showed that drug cheating is not restricted to individuals and their coaches, but could be, as reported of the defunct East Germany and other Soviet-era countries, a state-sponsored programme. The Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (California) case, in which athletes like Marion Jones, Dwain Chambers, CJ Hunter and Tim Montgomery were entangled between 2003 and 2007, is an example of how to correctly deal with drug cheats. The medallists among them were all stripped of their Olympic medals. It was the same with those who had world records. In Jones’ case, she lost three Olympic gold medals, was jailed for six months for lying to prosecutors and ordered to repay some of her winnings. It was a decisive step by the US Anti-Doping Agency to clamp down on the vice.
The IOC should also be firm in the interest of sports. Cheating discourages clean athletes. Bach ought to make a strong statement to cheats. And, it has done so before. It immediately sanctioned Ben Johnson, who won the men’s 100 metres gold in the Seoul ’88 Olympic Games, after the Canadian sprinter was caught for using stanozolol. Johnson was stripped of his honours and banned for two years. Lance Armstrong, a US cyclist, won seven Tour de France titles, before he confessed to doping; he was also punished. Maria Sharapova, the glamorous Russian tennis star, is serving a two-year suspension for abusing meldonium. The world is looking up to the IOC to chart the way out of the mess. Athletes will always try to be smart; but it is left for the authorities to enforce the rules.
The Russian scandal is, however, a lesson for the Nigerian authorities. Some of our athletes have been caught doping before, and, even as recently as 2015, eight of them were banned for using stimulants at the All Africa Games in Congo. Stringent measures are needed to countermand such devious practices that taint the image of a country in the global arena.
