Putin Says Russian Anti-Doping A Failure, But Denies State Involvement

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently admitted that Russia’s anti-doping system was a failure, per a report from TASS, the state-sponsored Russian news agency.  Over 1,000 Russian athletes, as well as a number of coaches and low-level government officials, have been implicated over the last two years in what might be the most opprobrious doping scandal in modern Olympic history, and the Russian Federation was almost entirely barred from Olympic competition in Rio last summer.  While many Russian athletes were allowed to compete in Rio, the Russian Paralympic Team was not allowed to compete at the 2016 Paralympic Games.  Furthermore, the Russian Athletics team will remain barred from the 2017 IAAF World Championships taking place in London in August.

WADA, with the publication of the McLaren Report, has provided more than substantial evidence for the existence of a state-sponsored doping scheme in Russia going back to at least the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics where coaches would provide athletes with clean urine in order to test clean for performance-enhancing drugs.

The director of Russia’s anti-doping agency, Anna Antseliovich, admitted in an interview with the New York Times that Russia did participate in a state-sponsored doping scheme during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.  While the allegations that the program was state-sponsored has been denied by Russian government officials including President Vladimir Putin, there is also evidence to suggest that the doping scheme continued beyond the 2014 Sochi Games.  Specifically, the second McLaren Report released in December of 2016 alleges that over 1,000 Russian athletes benefited from manipulations of samples in the Moscow WADA laboratory.

Regarding Russia’s failures at preventing its athletes from taking performance-enhancing drugs, President Vladimir Putin said the following:

“The most important thing is that we heed the demands of the independent [McLaren] commission despite its drawbacks, because we need to admit that some cases of doping have really been detected, as doping is completely unacceptable. This means that the current Russian anti-doping system has failed, and this is our fault,” said Putin, according to TASS.

Despite the evidence presented in the McLaren Report which implicates over 1,000 Russian athletes and coaches in the purportedly state-sponsored doping scheme, Russia is still slated to host the 2019 Winter Universiade in the city of Krasnoyarsk, and is already involved in preliminary talks about potentially hosting the 2028 Summer Olympic Games.  In response to Putin’s statements, Sir Craig Reedie, President of WADA, said the following:

“Since November 2015, the Agency (WADA), UK Anti-Doping and others have been working hard in supporting Russia’s efforts to rebuild a credible anti-doping system,” said Reedie. “This public admission by Russian President Vladimir Putin that their ‘anti-doping system has failed’ is an important step in the right direction,” Reedie stated.

Furthermore, WADA General Director Olivier Niggli said that regarding RUSADA, the national governing body of Russian athletics:

“Effectively, RUSADA must demonstrate that its processes are truly autonomous, independent from outside interference and properly resourced for the task of protecting clean athletes both in Russia and abroad….  Only once RUSADA, and its governing structures, has successfully demonstrated that it can achieve such independence, will Russian sport be able to redeem itself in the eyes of clean athletes and other stakeholders worldwide.”

Due to pervasive doping throughout the world of sports as exemplified by the Russian example, athletes from all over the world are coming together to promote clean competition.  Michael Phelps recently spoke before before the House Energy & Commerce Committee about the importance of clean sports and athletes’ integrity, where he stressed that confidence in a functional anti-doping system is vital to the confidence of future athletes who will someday carry the torch.