It is the dirty underbelly of international sport, and, two months before its greatest extravaganza, the spectre of doping has returned to haunt us. The 2016 edition of the Olympics begins with an opening ceremony in tourist hotspot Rio de Janeiro on August 5, but most of the headlines around the event have revolved around other unsavoury events.
For starters, the International Association of Athletics Federations will meet in Vienna on June 17 to take a decision that could have massive ramifications on the sport. The IAAF will take a call on whether to continue or revoke a ban on Russian athletes participating in track and field events at the Olympics – a decision that is fervently being awaited throughout the world.
A string of revelations
In November last year, the governing body of world athletics took the unprecedented step of suspending Russian athletes from all its competitions. This was the outcome of a damning 325-page report from the World Anti-Doping Agency. The report laid bare a culture of widespread state-sponsored doping in the country, along with deliberate destruction of samples and poor compliance.
Russia’s reaction to the entire mess has veered from defiance to striking a conciliatory note. The damning report was dismissed as relying upon “unverified sources” by Russian sports officials at first. But as the scale of the damage mounted, the country’s sports minister Vitaly Mutko apologised for the scandal in a column he wrote for the Sunday Times in May and pleaded for Russian athletes to be allowed to compete at the Olympics, arguing that “Russia was doing everything possible to eradicate the problem”.
However, the news coming out of Russia does not bode well for the country’s chances of competing at the Olympics. The former head of Russia’s anti-doping laboratory, Grigory Rodchenko, detailed in a New York Times exposé how Russian athletes at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi were provided performance-enhancing substances mixed in alcohol. The report also revealed the elaborate ways in which tainted urine samples were surreptitiously replaced with clean ones. Russia won 13 gold medals at these games with no athlete being caught for doping.
"Throw them out"
Other Russian athletes, including the high-profile tennis player Maria Sharapova, have also tested positive for the banned substance meldonium. There was more controversy when Sharapova was included in Russia’s team for the upcoming Olympics. Additionally, 23 other Russian athletes have also tested positive for banned substances in a re-analysis of their samples from the 2008 and 2012 Olympics, though their identities have not yet been revealed.
These new revelations have led to calls from various British and American athletes to keep Russia out of the competition. British javelin thrower Goldie Sayers even went to the extent of saying that she would consider boycotting the Olympics if the ban on Russia was provisionally lifted. Hence, any decision the IAAF takes on June 17 is likely to have far-reaching consequences.
Only the tip of the iceberg
The doping problem, however, is not restricted to Russia alone. Last month, Wada declared that Kenya’s anti-doping programme remained non-compliant. This was after the country, which topped the medals table at the 2015 World Athletics Championships, had missed two deadlines issued to it to comply with the world anti-doping agency code.
Like Russia, there has been widespread evidence that doping is rampant in the African country, with more than 40 athletes failing drug tests since 2011, and 18 serving bans. Dick Pound, the former Wada president, had even gone on record to say that it was “pretty clear that there are a lot of performance-enhancing drugs in Kenya”.
However, there may still be a reprieve. Faced with the very real threat that they would be banned from the Olympics, the Kenyan government made significant changes to its anti-doping legislation, which it hopes will satisfy Wada.
Russia and Kenya are not the only countries affected with this doping menace. In fact, they are only the tip of the iceberg. In April, China’s anti-doping agency was suspended by Wada for four months for submitting negative results. Back in February, a Chinese sports journalist claimed that China's athletes had confided in him that they were part of a state-sponsored doping programme.
Consequently, there has already been considerable discussion on what would happen if the IAAF went through on its threat and banned Russia (and possibly even Kenya) from competing at the Olympics. Those against such a ban argue that innocent untainted athletes would be punished for no fault of theirs.
Yelena Isinbayena, a Russian pole-vaulter widely considered as among the greatest in her sport, is a prime example – the two-time Olympic gold medallist has accused the world body of being discriminatory against Russian athletes and warned that she would take legal recourse if she was not allowed to participate.
The furore has cast a long shadow over the Rio Olympics, which has also been affected by the outbreak of the Zika virus. As the opening ceremony approaches, it is clear that the world of international sport will be anything but calm in the next two months. However, one can argue that the steps taken were necessary – the scourge of doping has affected international sport for far too long, and drastic measures were necessary to stamp it out.