Balance needed in ban on dope cheats
- With Russia banned from competing under its flag for four years, sport officials must commit to zero tolerance of premeditated cheating yet remain fair to the nation’s drug-clean athletes
The particular offence this time is manipulation and falsification of dope-cheating data supplied to investigators by Russia’s own anti-doping agency from its Moscow laboratory. Regrettably, it is the latest piece in a pattern. Russia was suspended for three years after confirmation of allegations by a former director of its anti-doping laboratory of rampant state-supported doping and tampering with urine samples at the 2012 summer games and the 2014 winter games.
A key condition of its controversial reinstatement by Wada in September last year was full disclosure of data from its Moscow laboratory. The International Olympic Committee says failure to comply, through manipulation of the raw data, amounted to “an attack on sport” and led to “strong condemnation” of those responsible at last weekend’s Olympic summit.
The national ban is a tragedy for clean Russian athletes who were no more than young teenagers or even children at the time of past doping offences in international competition. Rightly therefore, under the new sanctions, Russian athletes will still be allowed to compete at the Olympics under a neutral flag if they can show they were not part of a state-sponsored system of doping.
This is controversial in some quarters. In setting the standard of proof, Wada, Olympic authorities and national sporting associations must strive to strike a balance between zero tolerance of premeditated dope cheating, and fairness to drug-clean athletes who are the future of sport. It must not make a mockery of the oath that will be taken by an athlete from the host nation on behalf of all competitors at next year’s Olympic opening ceremony, promising to abide by the rules and to “commit to sport without doping or drugs”.
