JOIN USIAAF makes the perfect move
Track and field’s world governing body, the IAAF, still has a very long way to run before earning back our trust. Its former president Lamine Diack faces charges of corruption in France. Its new president, Sebastian Coe, who received Diack’s electoral stamp of approval, is back to answering prickly questions about what he knew and when he knew it.
But at least Coe and his fellow IAAF council members did the right thing recently: ruling unanimously that they would not lift the ban on the Russian federation in time for its athletes to compete under the Russian flag at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro (yes, despite all the headwinds, those games really are coming into view).
“I think it was institutional necessity,” said John Hoberman, a professor at the University of Texas at Ausin who is a sports historian and doping expert. But even if Coe needs every clear break with the past that he can muster, maintaining Russia’s ban was also justified.
The Russians have no monopoly on doping as those from the land of Lance Armstrong and Marion Jones need to acknowledge. But the breadth and depth of Russia’s top-down doping culture has still been shocking at a stage when international sport has seen enough scandals and fallen angels to turn even Pollyannas into cynics. It takes something special — and not in a good way — to get a whole national team banned from the Olympics, an event which still likes to bill itself as a refuge from politics and exclusion.
There is plenty of propaganda in that. In the 120 years since Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a French aristocrat, revived the Greek games in 1896, there have been bans and boycotts. Professionals were long barred from competing. Women were long restricted to shorter distances and lesser billing. South Africa was kept out — and rightly so — for its racist apartheid policies.
But there has never been an exclusionary moment quite like this. Until now, no country has had its athletes banned from an Olympics for doping: not even East Germany, whose shameful and state-sponsored system was not fully revealed until the country ceased to exist.
“The politics of doping in the ’70s and ’80s were nothing compared to what they are now, and the rest of the Olympic nations were essentially helpless with regard to cleaning up the East Germans,” Hoberman said. “It wasn’t even imagined. There was no leverage and the evidence base was patchy.”
There are also the excellent arguments being made by federations and athletes from other nations: Even Russian dopers who might be cleaning up their act now are still potential beneficiaries of past doping.
“After investigation it was found that the Russian federation cheated on the most egregious level,” Jenny Simpson, the former women’s 1,500M world champion from the United States, said. “How the IAAF acts on this case communicates to the sport and the world that there are either going to be consequences for cheating or not. For me, it’s that simple.”
Despite reports of largescale doping in other sports, it will require quite a leap — in terms of due process and the timetable — to ban Russia’s Olympic team as a whole from Rio. There also is an opening for Russian track and field athletes to compete, although not under a Russian flag. “The very tiny crack in the door is they have to be subject to a reliable drug-testing regime outside of Russia,” said Rune Andersen, chairman of the independent taskforce appointed by the IAAF to monitor Russia’s federation.
That very tiny crack could create some very loud legal debate in the less than two months that remain before the opening ceremony even if Andersen made it clear that “there won’t be many athletes who will manage to get through.”
One of them could be Darya Klishina, the 25-year-old Russian long jumper who is based at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida. One of her coaches there is Dwight Phillips, the 2004 Olympic men’s long jump champion from the United States who has been an outspoken advocate of tough anti-doping measures.
“Darya’s been training here in Florida for the last three years or so,” Phillips said. “It’s just an unfortunate situation for her, but at the same time when you look at Russia, they weren’t compliant with the rules. And it’s so important to set this precedent. If you are not compliant with making the sport clean and having a level playing field for all athletes, then you should not be allowed to compete.”
For Phillips, the IAAF taking on a country and its system is “much more impactful” than taking on individuals. But he also believes Klishina deserves a chance at the Olympics.
“I see the blood, sweat and tears,” he said. “You have to raise your eyebrows when athletes are training in Russia, but when you have athletes training abroad and undergoing the same rigorous testing programme as our Americans or Europeans, I think we need to take a look at that. It just doesn’t seem reasonable to ban everyone when you do have innocent people who are doing things the right way.”
Innocents suffer all the time in sport: See relay team members stripped of their medals because a teammate tested positive. See would-be champions of the past who missed their Olympic moment because of boycotts.
The challenge this time is how to determine on very short notice precisely who is doing it the right way without undermining the strong message sent by the Russia ban. Phillips is correct about the impact. Penalising a country, even at the risk of politicising the process, seems a much more effective method of ensuring rapid and enduring change.