A whistleblower's race

Yuliya Stepanova, the middle-distance runner who helped expose state-sponsored doping in Russia and set off a global scandal ahead of the 2016 Rio Olympics, returned to international competition last week.

Stepanova, a former member of Russia’s national track team now living in hiding in the United States with her husband, Vitaly Stepanov, and their 3-year-old son, ran the 800 metrs at the Indoor Grand Prix in Boston on Saturday. Although she was barred from competing in Rio, she received special permission from global track and field officials to compete as a neutral individual unaffiliated with any nation.

She finished seventh, in 2 minutes, 05.14 seconds, in a field that included the Olympians Lynsey Sharp of Britain and Habitam Alemu of Ethiopia. “My goal was not to fall too far behind,” Stepanova, 30, said after the race. She exchanged few words with her competitors as she changed her shoes. “Some athletes like what I did,” she said. “Some hate me.”

Charlene Lipsey of the United States, the winner of the race, expressed support for Stepanova’s participation but also argued that athletes with a record of doping — a list that includes Stepanova — should not be allowed to compete professionally.

The race was the first international 800-metre competition that Stepanova had officially finished since September 2015, months before all Russian track and field athletes were barred from global competition amid the nation’s mounting doping scandal. Those sanctions remain in effect.

Over the summer, the International Olympic Committee denied Stepanova’s request to enter the Rio Games as a neutral athlete, refusing to exempt her from the ban in spite of the unanimous recommendation of track officials who commended the lengths to which she had gone as a whistleblower. Together with her husband, Stepanov, a former employee of Russia’s national anti-doping agency, Stepanova spoke out about how Russian athletes had systematically doped and evaded drug testing, as she herself did until she was punished for a violation in early 2013.

Subsequent investigations and the testimony of Dr Grigory Rodchenkov, Russia’s longtime national anti-doping lab chief, who carried out the cover-ups, revealed that Russia was cheating on a dramatically wider scale than the couple had known.

Late last year, an investigator for the World Anti-Doping Agency published evidence that Russia’s government-directed doping schemes had involved, or benefited, more than 1,000 athletes across 30 disciplines. In Russia, the couple have been condemned as traitors, and they expressed little confidence on Saturday in Russia’s efforts to reform its anti-doping system. “In my view, it’s still a circus being run by a bunch of clowns,” Stepanov said.

“Running things in Russia right now is the person who created the doping system, Mr Mutko,” he added, referring to Vitaly Mutko, Russia’s former sports minister, whom President Vladimir Putin promoted to deputy prime minister last year.

Mutko has repeatedly denied state-sponsored doping in Russia, but he also admitted that most Russian athletes and coaches saw performance-enhancing drugs as necessary to win.

Stepanova, who competed in July at the European Athletics Championships in Amsterdam but was injured during her race and was later disqualified for a lane infringement, said that last year, she would have wanted to continue running for Russia if the nation had accepted her as a representative. She no longer feels that way, she said, expressing disappointment that Russia had remained defiant and had not changed its sporting culture.

She was glad not to be competing for a nation, she said. “I don’t have the pressure to deliver medals to anyone,” she said in Russian, speaking through an interpreter. She added that she was not planning to seek citizenship in the United States or elsewhere.
As part of cyberattacks on WADA last year, Stepanova’s private online athlete records — including her location — were stolen, prompting her family to relocate within the United States over the summer.

She said that while she and her family remained concerned for their personal safety — she has received death threats in recent years — she felt more secure in the United States than she had in Europe.

Since September, Stepanova has trained under Alexander Seeger, a coach in Germany with whom she communicates by email and Skype.

Her goal, she said, is to shave five seconds off her time and finish her event in less than two minutes. “When I was training in Russia, everybody told me that was not possible without doping,” she said.

She said she viewed the next three years, before the 2020 Tokyo Games, as her final chance to qualify for the Olympics.

“What a lot of athletes are forgetting, or what athletes in Russia never learned, is that the whole Olympic movement isn’t about winning at any cost,” Stepanov said.

“It’s about trying your best and respecting the competition. If you’re faster than them, good. If you’re not, it doesn’t make you a loser.”