We take a break from the regularly scheduled updates of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland to bring a story that affects 28 sports, and involves massive amounts of cheating and corruption from the bottom to the top.
One may have heard a few months ago that the IAAF (the governing body of all track athletes in the world) had recommended that the IOC or International Olympic Committee suspend all Russian track and field athletes from the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. This was completed and the dreams of many athletes were dashed not only due to some horrible decisions by the athletes themselves, but the pressure on top.
The IAAF upheld the vote last month thanks to additional information from the World Anti-Doping Agency or WADA, the same agency who took away seven Tour De France Titles from Lance Armstrong only a few years ago.
Most thought that the cheating would have stopped with Russian track, but just as recent as July 18, the answer was much more than that.
According to the summary of the WADA report, the Russian government sponsored a massive scandal, all facts which had been proven without a reasonable doubt to the agency.
The Moscow laboratory operated (what has been called a) "Disappearing Positive Methodology," a "fail-safe" system designed to protect the careers of these Russian athletes. The Sochi lab went through a "unique sample swapping methodology" to enable their athletes to compete at the Games.
Additionally, the Ministry of Sport in Russia knew about and did not report these allegations to WADA.
Since then, the Ministry of Sport has remained adamant about their cleanliness and Vladimir Putin has taken action towards some of the direct officials in the laboratory to have them resign (ESPN). However, athletes in 28 different sports were found to have been cheating from 2011-2015 leading to the recommended ban for Rio 2016 from the WADA report.
To the few clean athletes in Russia, this ban takes away dreams and calls into question people who are not trying to take advantage of the system. For many athletes, (unlike Michael Phelps), they have one shot realistically at Olympic gold. Their work seems wasted and leaves athletes struggling for an identity in something else besides their sport. Thankfully for some, a few Russians will be able to go to Rio as "independents" meaning they will compete for themselves and not under the Russian flag.
If the all-sports ban is used for Rio against Russia, then it will change the medal landscape dramatically. Russia had the fourth most medals in London 2012 (although some have been stripped since then) at 65 total medals, 29 of them being gold. Track / field, wrestling, boxing and gymnastics are all sports that would be massively affected by the ban.
It's easy to blanket Russian athletes as all cheaters, and take an America first thinking into this story, as the Russians have clearly lost the world's trust in sport. But the U.S. has been far from perfect in Olympic sport cheating. According to a Wikipedia count, 235 USA athletes over the years have admitted to some sort of doping or had been caught across all sports, Olympic and non-Olympic.
There is a systematic problem in the way top athletes see success. Brainwashed by their peers, coaches and higher personnel, athletes see a quick fix and a way forward that really doesn't take all that much work. Money, sponsorships, prestige and pride are all on the line as each aspiring champion gets on the block, starting line, court or field.
Each athlete should get to be sure that they have just as good of a chance to win as the person they step up against. What are sports without that mutual feeling?
Russia's Ministry of Sport responded to the IOC and WADA's findings with this statement, "Clean athletes' dreams are being destroyed because of the reprehensible behavior of other athletes and officials. They have sacrificed years of their lives striving to compete at the Olympics and now that sacrifice looks likely to be wasted."
Well said Russia. Well said.
