© Copyright – 2019 – Athletics Illustrated
Deluded Russian Olympic pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva hopes of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) will lift the country’s suspension before the World Athletics Championships in Doha was ridiculous. Their suspension, in fact, will likely be continued for a 12th time and the World Anti-Doping Agency will continue their greater ban from all sports – it is highly unlikely the country with the systematic doping program, will compete in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
Apparently, the latest scandal suggests that the Russian Anti-Doping Agency tampered with data from its Moscow Laboratory before The WADA was granted access as a condition to their reinstatement.
On November 18, 2015, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) declared the All Russian Anti-Doping Agency non-compliant with the WADA code. This was one week after it was discovered that there was widespread and systematic doping in Russia.
In May 2017, WADA set a Compliance Roadmap for RUSADA to follow.
By June of 2017, RUSADA had complete 19 of 31 items in the roadmap and were deemed on the road to compliance, as all 19 conditions were benchmarked as Part 1, of the two-part process. WADA gave the green light for RUSADA to begin the process of being reinstated.
By November 2017 WADA’s mood changed and decided that RUSADA had not yet met reinstatement conditions.
The president of the Russian Olympic Committee Alexander Zhukov said, “We agree with the fact that the anti-doping system in Russia has seen a significant failure. “This failure was the result of organised activities for manipulating the doping samples of athletes from Russia by a group of individuals, whose purpose was to extract personal gain. The organisers were the leaders of RUSADA, the Moscow anti-doping Laboratory and others. The degree of involvement and guilt of specific individuals will be determined at the end of the investigation, which is being held at the moment by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (SKR). At the same time, we categorically deny the existence of a State system of support for the use of performance-enhancing drugs.”
Which category, the dishonesty category?
It was proven that the Russians absolutely were guilty of systematic doping.
By September 2018, the Russians continued to arrogantly deny that they continue to have a doping problem. At that time WADA set two conditions that must be met.
1. That the responsible authorities for anti-doping in Russia must publically accept the reported outcomes of the McLaren Investigation; and
2. That the Russian Government must provide access for appropriate entities to the stored samples and electronic data in the former Moscow Laboratory, which are sealed off due to a Federal investigation.
From the 31 conditions set in 2015, one was that WADA was to be granted access to the implicated Moscow Laboratory and its data collection and storage computers. They missed deadlines and as written in Athletics Illustrated at that time, we suggested that they are possibly manipulating the data, so that when they do meet the condition to grant WADA access, all of the information may not be there.
WADA will review a new report which indicated that the Russians manipulated the data before it was extracted. The meeting was set to take place Monday, September 23. RUSADA’s suspension will likely be continued.
Earlier this year nearly 300 athletes were identified as having the most suspicious samples in data retrieved from the Moscow Laboratory and WADA sent evidentiary packages on 43 competitors to the relevant International Federations.
Don’t expect to see the Russians flying flags at opening and closing ceremonies or hear the Russian national anthem at Doha 2019 or the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
