WADA Investigate Russian Swimming

The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) is to investigate allegations of systemic doping in Russian swimming. The agency will examine the independent report it commissioned which revealed systemic performance-enhancing drug use in Russian athletics before deciding whether to widen the inquiry.

Wada will look for corroborating evidence and whether there is new material involving swimming before determining the level of investigation.

Russian athletes are suspended by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), and a report in The Times on Wednesday has now alleged systemic doping was taking place in Russian swimming.

Craig Reedie, the Wada president, said: “There is no doubt that today’s disturbing assertions of orchestrated doping in Russian swimming should be scrutinised. Wada and its partners are under no illusions about the challenges facing sport’s integrity today. Clean athletes are justifiably concerned that their rights are being eroded through the minority that choose to dope in sport.

“As a result of information and evidence collected, Wada will make an informed decision as to what form of inquiry is needed and who will conduct it.”

Wada expressed “concern” following the allegations which “arrive at a time when trust in clean sport is already in a perilous state”.

Russia’s track and field athletes could miss August’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro following the Wada independent commission report into athletics, which was published late in 2015,with a second part earlier this year, and prompted their suspension by the IAAF.

Wada has written to the International Swimming Federation (Fina), and expressed particular concerns about the alleged role of Sergei Portugalov, chief of the Russian Athletics Federation (ARAF) medical commission, who is facing sanctions after the independent report into athletics.

A Wada statement said: “We are concerned by the allegations that Mr Sergei Portugalov – who is currently facing a lifetime ban from working in athletics due to the commission’s findings – may be working in swimming. It should be noted that, under the world anti-doping code, such a lifetime sanction should also be recognised by all other international sport federations.”

Fina said that it had focused anti-doping efforts on Russian competitors after the Wada independent commission report into athletics, and called on The Times to share its evidence.

An International Olympic Committee spokesperson said: “At this stage anyone with any hard evidence should give it to Fina and to Wada.”

Fina insisted it had taken steps to protect its anti-doping procedures following the report into athletics, noting in a statement that: “While Fina is not aware of any concrete evidence of systemic doping in Russian swimming, we have taken a particularly robust approach to our anti-doping procedures in relation to Russia and Russian competitions, in light of Wada’s recent investigation.

“Fina issued a directive to ensure the continued integrity of the testing programme. The entirety of Fina’s unannounced out-of-competition doping control programme in Russia is now conducted by a third-party, independent of Fina and Rusada [the Russian anti-doping agency], the Swedish company IDTM.”

The 2015 Aquatics World Championships took place in Kazan, Russia and Fina pointed to the anti-doping measures in place during the competition in July and August of last year. There were 645 samples collected – 457 urine and 188 blood tests – and a further 418 blood screenings as part of the biological passport programme.

The tests were analysed in the then Wada-accredited laboratory in Moscow, under supervision of independent observers from Wada-accredited laboratories in Barcelona and London. Every sample collected is being stored in Barcelona, Fina said, and could be re-examined.

Fina added that “the great majority” of samples collected from Russian swimmers were analysed in Wada-accredited laboratories outside of Russia in 2015. All samples in 2016 will be analysed overseas, with Fina noting that it “is currently conducting target-testing for the 10 best-performing athletes in each event, with at least five tests before the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro”.

Russia’s breaststroke world champion Yuliya Efimova could face a lengthy or even lifetime ban after she was suspended by the Russian Swimming Federation amid reports she had tested positive for meldonium.

The tennis star Maria Sharapova recently tested positive for meldonium – intended to treat ischaemia, or poor blood flow, but which can improve endurance – and Wada said on Tuesday that there had been 110 positive tests for the substance since it was added to its prohibited list on 1 January.

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Adidas End IAAF Sponsorship

The German sportswear company signed an 11-year agreement with the International Association of Athletics Federations in 2008 reported to be worth around £23m. But the BBC reported that the ongoing doping and corruption scandal has prompted Adidas to inform the IAAF that it will be pulling out of the deal. Neither Adidas nor the IAAF has made any comment.

According to the report, the move will result in tens of millions of dollars in lost income. The BBC claims the IAAF was told Adidas was considering ending its relationship with them in November after the publication of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) Independent Commission’s first report, which detailed claims of “state sponsored doping” within Russia.

The BBC, citing anonymous sources, said the sponsorship deal, signed in November 2008, was worth around $8m (£5.61m) per year.

The IAAF said it was in close contact will all its sponsors and partners as it embarked on reform.

Adidas is one of the IAAF’s “Official Partners” along with Canon, Toyota, Seiko, TDK, TBS and Mondo.

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IAAF Curioser and Curioser for Coe

The second part of the Wada report into doping in Russia and attempted cover-ups at the IAAF will conclude that there was no way members of the world athletics governing body’s council, which included the current president Sebastian Coe, could have been unaware of the extent of doping and non-enforcement of the rules in track and field, according to the Associated Press.

AP says details of the 89-page investigation, to be released by the World Anti-Doping Agency on Thursday, were provided to the news agency early by a person who had reviewed it. The person did not want to be identified because the report had not been publicly released.

The report also says that the leader of track’s governing body, Lamine Diack, told a lawyer he would need to cut a deal with the Russian president Vladimir Putin to ensure nine Russian athletes accused of doping would not compete at the 2013 world championships in Moscow, according to AP.

The report, written by Wada’s first president, Dick Pound, says the International Association of Athletics Federations must restructure to ensure corruption cannot go unchecked. The corruption “cannot be blamed on a small number of miscreants”, Pound wrote.

“The corruption was embedded in the organisation,” the report says. “It cannot be ignored or dismissed as attributable to the odd renegade acting on his own.”

Coe was accused by a parliamentary committee of a “lack of curiosity” and failing to ask enough questions during his eight years as vice-president. Asked whether the IAAF was institutionally corrupt, Coe insisted it was not and said allegations had been made against only a “handful” of employees.

The Wada report comes a day after the AP released details from six years of IAAF internal emails, reports and notes showing a high level of communication between the athletics federation and Russian officials about suspicious test results from the nation’s athletes, including plans to cover up some doping evidence.

In addition to the deal-making friendship forged between Putin and then IAAF president Diack, the report details a sudden increase from $6m to $25m (£17.4m) for Russian rights to televise the 2013 worlds provided by a Russian bank, and also tells of a lawyer who was handpicked by Diack to handle Russian cases even though he had little experience with anti-doping measures.

Pound details meetings between Diack and IAAF lawyer Huw Roberts, who delivered details of the nine Russian doping cases directly to Diack and asked how he planned to resolve them.

With no resolution coming, Diack explained to Roberts “he was in a difficult position that could only be resolved by President Putin of Russia with whom he had struck up a friendship,” the report said.

Eventually, the report says, none of the nine athletes competed in Moscow, but their cases were not further pursued by the IAAF. Those delays led to Roberts’ resignation in January 2014. By then, according to the report’s details, Roberts had virtually no control over cases involving Russians.

A separate report, by the IAAF independent ethics commission this month, said that Roberts had threatened to resign three times over the issue of Russian athletes with suspect blood values not being sanctioned since he learned of the problem in late 2012. After repeatedly confronting Lamine Diack, Roberts tendered his resignation at the end of 2013 and eventually resigned in April 2014 before returning under Coe.

In November 2011, Diack turned over responsibility for Russian cases involving biological passport blood tests to his personal lawyer, Habib Cissé.

Cissé is under investigation in France for corruption. Diack’s son, Papa Massata Diack, has been banned from track for life. Papa Massata and another of Diack’s sons, Khalil, both had IAAF jobs outside the official framework of the federation that set them up to execute all the fraud, the report said.

The report details a 2012 meeting at a Moscow hotel involving a Russian TV adviser, Papa Massata Diack, Cissé and the Russian athletics federation head Valentin Balakhnichev, who was also honorary treasurer of the IAAF. The meeting was set to resolve a “problem” with the $6m price tag for the Russian TV rights to the following year’s world championships.

After the meeting, Papa Massata Diack had an arrangement with a leading Russian bank worth $25m.

Pound called for the IAAF to undertake forensic examination of how the TV rights were awarded to determine if there were any improprieties.

This was the second of two reports from Pound. His previous report, released in November, detailed corruption in Russia. Since then, the country’s track team has been suspended, along with its anti-doping agency and the Moscow anti-doping lab.

Together the report and other recent revelations indicate that many officials inside the IAAF, which announced the ban of Russian athletes in November, were aware of the growing Russian doping problem for years before taking action against the nation, and some may have been actively covering up Russian wrongdoing.

On the back of the ethics commission report, the IAAF banned Papa Massata Diack, Balakhnichev, and Alexei Melnikov, the former head coach of Russia’s race-walking and long-distance running programmes, for life.

Lamine Diack is on bail in France and the prosecutor said Papa Massata Diack, believed to be in Senegal, would be arrested if he set foot in France.

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Rio Unlikely for Russian Athletics

Russia are unlikely to return to international competition in time for next year's Rio Olympics, says European Athletics president Svein Arne Hansen.

Russia's athletics federation was banned by the International Association of Athletics Federations for alleged involvement in widespread doping.

An IAAF inspection committee is due to visit Russia in January.

"For the moment they have to fulfil the conditions, but I cannot really see them competing in Rio," Hansen said.

The committee is likely to report back to the IAAF Council at the earliest at its meeting in Cardiff, Wales, on 27 March, less than five months before the Olympics.

"They must have a cultural change," Hansen told Athletics Weekly magazine. "They must get rid of all those people from before.

"We know some good people in Russian athletics and I'm sure they will be elected. We hope that some new people will come in who really understand that this must be changed."

The IAAF voted to suspend Russia's federation (Araf) on 13 November after the publication of an independent World Anti-Doping Agency report that alleged "state-sponsored doping".

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Cookson Denies Verbruggen Claims

The president of cycling’s governing body has denied his predecessor Hein Verbruggen’s claims that they have reached an agreement to end legal proceedings which would have seen the Dutchman retain his role as honorary president of the UCI.

Verbruggen, who left his post as president in 2005, had threatened legal action against cycling’s governing body over what he described as an “outrageously biased, misleading and frequently wrong” investigation into the sport’s doping past.

The current president, Brian Cookson, has previously called for Verbruggen to step down but the Dutchman has told insidethegames.biz that they had reached an agreement which means: “Mr Cookson renounces definitively from asking me to resign from my honorary presidency and agrees not to mention this question any more publicly or privately.” According to insidethegames, the UCI also paid £29,000 towards Verbruggen’s legal costs.

However, Cookson has denied that is the case and stated that any agreement with Verbruggen was now void.

“I was elected to change the way the UCI conducts itself and therefore, following a request from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), I indeed met with Mr Hein Verbruggen last summer,” read a statement. “We came to a confidential agreement which was to ensure, amongst other things, that he would stop using his influence to criticise and cause trouble for the UCI. Since Mr Verbruggen never respected his commitments, the agreement is considered null. No money has ever been paid to Mr Verbruggen since I became President.”

A 227-page report into cycling’s doping culture said that the UCI colluded with Lance Armstrong to cover up positive tests at the 1999 Tour de France, when Verbruggen was in charge of the organisation.

Verbruggen, 73, said he started a court case against the UCI and Cookson, as well as lodging a complaint to the International Olympic Committee ethics commission which resulted in the IOC mediating between the parties with an agreement signed to end legal proceedings.

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IAAF Diack Admits Russian Money

The former IAAF president Lamine Diack has admitted to police that he asked Russia for €1.5m to run a political campaign in his native Senegal, according to the French newspaper Le Monde.

France’s national office for financial prosecutions is investigating Diack, who stepped down as IAAF president in August when he was succeeded by Sebastian Coe.

Police say he is suspected of taking the money to cover up positive drugs tests by Russian athletes.

Le Monde says it has obtained transcripts of Diack’s interviews with police in which he admits to having spoken with the former Russian athletics federation president and IAAF treasurer Valentin Balakhnichev about needing money. Diack wanted to finance opposition against Senegal’s then-president Abdoulaye Wade.

The transcript reported by Le Monde said: “I told him that to win the elections, I needed about €1.5m. He said to me: ‘We’ll try to find it, no problem.’

“At that time there was these problems of suspending Russian athletes a few months ahead of the world championships in Russia. We came to an agreement. Russia paid. Balakhnichev organised all of that.”

Balakhnichev denied to Le Monde that he had had such a conversation with Diack.

On Friday, the IAAF ethics commission concluded a three-day hearing into Balakhnichev, Diack’s son Papa Massata Diack, the former IAAF anti-doping director Gabriel Dollé and the Russian federation’s former chief coach for long-distance athletes, Alexei Melnikov.

The officials faced disciplinary hearings on charges that they covered up doping offences. All four are charged with various breaches of the IAAF’s code of ethics and could face lifetime bans with a decision expected in early January.

The IAAF charges involve the Russian runner Liliya Shobukhova, the former London marathon winner who turned whistleblower for the World Anti-Doping Agency this year, and money she paid to have her doping violations covered up.

According to testimony she has given, Shobukhova paid more than $600,000 (£435,000) for violations to be covered up so that she was not suspended.

The IAAF has banned Russia from international competition after a report by Wada’s independent commission, headed by Dick Pound, who is due to release the second part of his findings on 14 January.

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Top Managers of Rusada Step Down

All the top managers of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) have stepped down, the R-Sport news agency reported on Thursday, in the latest steps to clean up Russian athletics to avoid missing next year’s Olympics.

Russia was suspended from international athletics last month after a special commission of the World Anti-Doping Agency exposed widespread state-sponsored cheating and corruption. It is working to lift the ban in time for its athletes to compete at the Rio Games next August.

“It was decided at a meeting attended by the heads of Rusada that the general director, Ramil Khabriev, should be relieved of his position,” R-Sport quoted Natalia Zhelanova, an adviser to the sports minister, as saying.

She said “all the high-level management” of the agency was stepping down.

Anna Antseliovich, head of Rusada’s Result Management and Investigation Department, has been named as the acting general director of the organisation.

Since Soviet times, Russia has invested heavily to ensure success at the Olympic Games and earn itself the status of sporting superpower, so banishment from Rio would be a severe blow to its prestige.

The sport’s world governing body, the IAAF, said last week that Russia could only be reinstated to international competition if it complied with a detailed ‘roadmap’.

Among the requirements were that Russia demonstrate that none of its sporting officials have any prior links to doping, and that Rusada should be able to operate “effectively and without interference”.

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia was against doping in sport, and people who used it must be punished.

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Russian Agency Not Being Disbanded

The Russian Anti-Doping Agency will not be disbanded despite the scandal surrounding the systematic doping of Russian athletes, the country’s sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, said on Monday.

Rusada was heavily criticised in the independent commission report put together by Dick Pound on behalf of World Anti-Doping Agency earlier this month and was suspended after being declared “non-compliant with immediate effect” at a Wada meeting in Colorado.

The scandal has led to all Russian athletes being banned indefinitely by IAAF, a decision Russia decided last week to accept alongside the promise to cooperate with inspectors who will oversee changes to its drug-testing system. However, Mutko has insisted that it’s own testing authority will not be shut down.

“No doubt, Rusada will remain as an organisation,” he is quoted as saying by the Russian news agency, Tass. “We have started working [jointly with Wada].”

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