It all started with a documentary.
On Dec. 3, 2014, a German television station aired a documentary entitled Top Secret Doping: How Russia Makes Its Winners, claiming that there was a well-established doping culture — and state-sponsored — within the All-Russia Athletics Federation (ARAF).
Shortly after it aired, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) launched an independent investigation into the accusations.
After interviewing numerous people involved in the Russian sporting world and reviewing thousands of documents, WADA concluded that, although there was not any evidence directly linking the Russian government, there was rampant doping occurring within Russia, with government involvement.
“The investigation has confirmed the existence of widespread cheating through the use of doping substances and methods to ensure, or enhance the likelihood of, victory for athletes and team,” WADA said in its report. “The cheating was done by the athletes’ entourages, officials and the athletes themselves.”
How it was done
In order to get away with doping, you need the involvement of not only athletes, coaches and officials, but also of doctors and laboratory personnel.
After being told by WADA to preserve samples, Moscow laboratory officials destroyed more than 1,400 of them.
WADA runs accredited laboratories around the world in compliance with the World Anti-Doping Program and the International Standard for Laboratories, with the specific goal of being impartial and objective. When investigators arrived at the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory they found “severe deficiencies in operations.”
- Laboratory staff said that there was direct involvement from the Ministry of Sport. There was also intimidation by the Russian security service (FSB), with staff reporting that the service bugged the office and wiretapped the telephones. However, this could not be confirmed by the investigators. This culture of fear, the investigators concluded, would negate any impartiality.
“Many tests that the laboratory has conducted should be considered highly suspect,” reads the report (13.4).
- One athlete said that she competed “dirty” at the 2011 and 2012 Russian Indoor Championships with “the full knowledge and authorization of ARAF head running coach, Aleksey Melnikov, and ARAF team doctor, Dr. Sergey Portugalov. Since she was competing ‘dirty,’ Portugalov instructed Stepanova to provide him with her test sample numbers, so that he could communicate with the laboratory to ensure her sample was not reported as positive.”
- The Moscow laboratory director, Grigory Rodchenkov, is implicated highly in the findings. The same athlete was told that she tested positive for a banned substance during the Russian National Athletics Championships in 2010. She was told that the results would not be reported to the Russian National Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) if she paid 30,000 rubles to Rodchenkov. The athlete made the payment at the direction of her coach and the positive result was never reported.
- Rodchenkov met with WADA officials and actually admitted to intentionally destroying the 1,417 samples, with the goal of limiting the audit and “reduce any potential adverse findings from subsequent analysis….”
- Even the testing wasn’t done to standard. Samples that were reported as being negative were retested in a Lausanne WADA-accredited laboratory and found to be positive. The Lausanne report even went so far as to say “no accredited laboratory should have missed” the positive result.
- Money was exchanged between coaches, the president of the ARAF and Rodchenkov.
- Another athlete reported that she had to pay a percentage of her annual winnings to ARAF representatives which ensured that she would be kept in the clear with no negative results being reported. This lab, however, was not believed to be known to ARAF and RUSADA.
- Not only was there evidence of corruption at the laboratory, but there was a second laboratory in Moscow, one that was not WADA accredited and whose “precise use is unknown.” However, investigators believed that the lab was helping in the doping cover-up.
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