Doping in Russia

[5] According to British journalist Andrew Jennings, a KGB colonel stated that the agency's officers had posed as anti-doping authorities from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to undermine doping tests and that Soviet competitors were "rescued with [these] tremendous efforts".

[34][35] In November 2015, France began a criminal investigation into former IAAF president Lamine Diack, alleging that he accepted a 1 million euro bribe from the ARAF in 2011 to cover up positive doping results of at least six Russian athletes.

[40] The Sunday Times reported that Kamaev had approached the newspaper shortly before his death planning to publish a book on "the true story of sport pharmacology and doping in Russia since 1987".

In March 2016, German broadcaster ARD aired a documentary called "Russia's Red Herrings", alleging that competitors were alerted about testing plans and offered banned substances by individuals at RUSADA and ARAF.

[citation needed] An ARD documentary in June 2016 implicated Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko in covering up doping by a football player at FK Krasnodar.

[53] A task force chaired by Rune Andersen recommended against reinstating Russia after reporting that criteria had not been met and that there were "detailed allegations, which are already partly substantiated, that the Russian authorities, far from supporting the anti-doping effort, have in fact orchestrated systematic doping and the covering up of adverse analytical findings".

[55][56] On 18 July 2016, Richard McLaren, a Canadian attorney retained by WADA to investigate Rodchenkov's allegations, published a 97-page report covering significant state-sponsored doping in Russia.

[57]: 39  The system covered up positive results in a wide range of sports:[57]: 41 In response to these findings, WADA announced that RUSADA should be regarded as non-compliant with respect to the World Anti-Doping Code and recommended that Russian participants be banned from competing at the 2016 Summer Olympics.

[39] In February 2017, All-Russia Athletic Federation vice-president Andrey Silnov held a press conference in Moscow alongside a former Soviet competitor who said that East German successes due to state-sponsored doping are legitimate results of "good pharmacology" and should not be condemned.

The organisation also stated, "WADA would expect the Russian authorities to take responsibility for this deliberate system of cheating that was uncovered by the McLaren Investigation – as is stipulated within RUSADA's Roadmap to Compliance – rather than continually shifting the blame onto others.

[102] Russia's ski team coach went even further and accused Ilia Chernousov (a skier who won a bronze medal in the 50 km freestyle event) of "leaking information" to WADA.

[105] In an interview with the New York Times, Rodchenkov reported that Yuri Nagornykh, the deputy minister of sport, had asked him to incriminate a Ukrainian competitor, Vita Semerenko, during a competition in Moscow leading up to the Olympics.

[127] Despite the two disqualifications, the IOC announced on 28 February that it had chosen to reinstate Russia's Olympic membership, just days after the end of the Winter Games, as no more cases of doping had been found in the delegation.

The WADA president described it as a 'major breakthrough for clean sport' and said that they were now starting their second phase of authentication and review of the data that had been collected to make sure that it had not been compromised and to build strong cases against Russian competitors that might have doped.

[166] Russia's 2008 Olympic high jump champion Andrey Silnov stepped down from his position as the vice-president of the Russian Athletics Federation in June after it was reported that he was under investigation for a possible doping violation following a re-analysis of his sample from 2013.

He also added that "Russia was afforded every opportunity to get its house in order and rejoin the global anti-doping community for the good of its competitors and of the integrity of sport, but it chose instead to continue in its stance of deception and denial".

[187] In a case that was described as 'almost identical' to that of Danil Lysenko, Russian figure skater Maria Sotskova was handed a 10-year ban from the sport by RUSADA for submitting a forged medical document in relation to her three missed doping tests and the presence of a prohibited substance in her body.

[203][204] Due to Valieva being a minor at the time, as well as being classified as a "protected person" under WADA guidelines, RUSADA and the IOC announced on 12 February that they would broaden the scope of their respective investigations to include members of her entourage (e.g., coaches, team doctors, etc.).

[209] Olympic medalists Steven Holcomb, Matthew Antoine, Martins Dukurs, and Lizzy Yarnold questioned the decision to hold the FIBT World Championships 2017 in Sochi, with boycotts considered by Austria, Latvia, and South Korea.

Some competitors were concerned that they might unwittingly ingest a banned substance if the host tampered with food or drinks,[210] while others "were worried about the evidence that Russian laboratories had been opening tamper-proof bottles.

Russian doping has been featured in several documentaries broadcast in Germany, France, and the United States: Some sportspeople from other countries have criticised WADA, alleging that the agency has been reluctant to investigate Russia despite multiple tips over several years.

"[12] In June 2016, The Guardian reported that a letter approved by over twenty competitors' groups from multiple sports and countries as well as the chairs of the IOC's and WADA's athletes committees, Claudia Bokel and Beckie Scott, had been sent to IOC president Thomas Bach and WADA head Craig Reedie; the letter criticised the organisations for inaction and silence until the media became involved and said that competitors' confidence in the anti-doping system had been "shattered".

'"[234] Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star said, "If the threshold Russia established is not high enough to merit a total ban from an Olympic Games, it's a remarkable precedent to set.

[246] Expressing disappointment, a member of the IOC Athletes' Commission, Hayley Wickenheiser, wrote, "I ask myself if we were not dealing with Russia would this decision to ban a nation [have] been an easier one?

"[239] Writing for Deutsche Welle in Germany, Olivia Gerstenberger said that Bach had "flunked" his first serious test, adding, "With this decision, the credibility of the organization is shattered once more, while that of state-sponsored doping actually receives a minor boost.

"[16] Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that the Russian media portrayed the German documentaries as "part of a Western conspiracy with the aim of weakening the great nation that Vladimir Putin lifted from its knees".

[264] Writing for The New York Times, Andrew E. Kramer said that Russia responded to the IAAF's decision against reinstatement with "victimhood" reflecting a "culture of grievances that revolves around perceived slights and anti-Russian conspiracies taking place in the outside world, particularly in Western countries".

[265] Andrew Osborn of Reuters wrote that the Russian government had "deftly deflected the blame by passing it off as a Western Cold War-style plot to sabotage Russia's international comeback".

[269] After Russian competitors said that McLaren was about "politics" rather than sport, the British biathlon association stated that their comments were "brain-washed, deluded and dishonest" and decided to boycott an event in Russia.

"[99] On 17 November 2017, top Russian Olympic official Leonid Tyagachev said that Grigory Rodchenkov, who had alleged that Russia was running a systematic doping programme, "should be shot for lying, like Stalin would have done".