The shocking revelations of a World Anti-Doping Agency report alleging governmental cover-ups of doping for track and field athletes could prevent Russia from taking part in the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. The WADA commission, chaired by Dick Pound, found that even Russia's intelligence agency, the FSB, was involved and spent last year's games in Sochi spying on Moscow's anti-doping lab, according to a report from John Leicester and Graham Dunbar of the Associated Press.
"(The) Olympic Games in London were, in a sense, sabotaged by the admission of athletes who should have not been competing, and could have been prevented from competing," the report said, per the AP.
The WADA report also suggests that "widespread inaction" by and bribery and extortion involving the International Association of Athletics Federations, one of the governing bodies of international competition, played a major role in athletes with violations continuing to compete as well. Just last week, IAAF president Lamine Diack was detained and later charged with corruption and money laundering.
"It's worse than we thought," Pound said, via the AP report. "It may be a residue of the old Soviet Union system."
Pound's commission recommended that the WADA declare the Russian athletics federation "non-compliant" with the worldwide anti-doping code and, in turn, the IAAF suspend Russia from competition.
The IAAF will consider sanctions against Russia, including a possible suspension that would keep Russian track and field athletes from competing in international competition, including the Rio Games.
"If they are suspended - and it sounds like the IAAF is moving in that direction already - and they are still suspended, at the time of Rio there will be no Russian track and field athletes there," Pound told the AP.
Russian Sports Minister and FIFA executive committee member Vitaly Mutko, accused by the commission of giving direct orders to cover up doping violations by Russian athletes, responded to the probe indicating his belief that it amounts to persecution, though Russia does nothing that other countries don't also do. Acting president of the Russian athletics federation, Vadim Zelichenok, said that he does not believe the government is engaged in efforts to cover up doping violations.
The report alleges that Grigory Rodchenkov, the director of the Moscow testing lab, ordered "1,417 doping control samples to be destroyed to deny evidence for the inquiry." The probe also found that members of the FSB infiltrated Russia's anti-doping efforts at Sochi, part of a more intricate pattern of "direct intimidation and interference by the Russian state with the Moscow laboratory operations," according to the report.
Unfortunately for fair play and sportsmanship, Russia isn't the only country suspected of such doping cover up efforts. Kenya - said to have a "real problem" - is among a number of other countries who may be "facing the problem of orchestrated doping."
