This is a shocker. Russia has been provisionally suspended from athletics events for the foreseeable future. This includes the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, Brazil, due to start in August. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the governing body when it comes to track and field events, barred the All-Russian Athletics Federation (ARAF) from competing internationally.
For the world of athletics, this is really big, since it’s not just the 2016 Olympics that be affected but Russia may not be entitled to host the 2016 World Race Walking Cup in Cheboksary and the 2016 World Junior Championships in Kazan.
It all started in December 2014 when German state broadcaster ARD aired "Secret Doping Dossier: How Russia produces its Winners" -- a damning 60-minute documentary alleging systematic state-sponsored doping in Russian athletics. The International Olympics Committee called for an investigation. Less than two weeks later, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) set up three-person independent commission to investigate these claims. In August 2015, ARD aired a second documentary, claiming that they were leaked an IAAF database with details of 12,000 blood tests from about 5,000 competitors which revealed extraordinary levels of doping.
Incidentally, the IAAF were in the middle of a presidential election and then candidate, now president, Lord Sebastian Coe, made the war against doping his platform for the elections. Now, he will not bow down from the fight to rid the world of athletics from doping.
Russia have a few choices laid out in front of them. If ARAF voluntarily accepts the provisional ban, and starts investigations into the alleged state-sponsored doping, there will be a roadmap to return to the fold, albeit with a cleaner image. They will have to provide a comprehensive report on how all these failures on their part will be resolved, ban certain officials named in the documentaries that spawned the investigations and more, including preventing any actions by state agencies that may affect the independence of the anti-doping programme in Russia. They should comply, according to Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko.
Russia has been an athletics powerhouse for as long as anyone can remember. Their absence in next year’s Olympics as well as other tournaments will be seriously missed. If the IOC and the IAAF do allow them back, there will be a backlash from other countries, whose athletes have been losing to Russian counterparts in various disciplines for a while now. Even the move to allow athletes to compete under the Olympic flag will have adverse consequences.
After the 1988 Seoul Olympics, when Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson tested positive for steroids, Athletics Canada worked to clean up the sport in the country, imposing strict norms and penalizing those responsible for doping. They have grown in stature since, with impressive medal turnouts in the past few major world tournaments,
Russia will have to bite the bullet and accept this blow. There is no place for doping in any sport, despite the new age ‘win at all costs’ mantra that many keep chanting. The sanctity of these sports must be maintained and it’s about time that there are more crackdowns across the world, lest national governing bodies use doping to gain more momentum and win medals, relegating national pride to the back burner.
Russia will come back. They will probably even come back stronger. But, in coming back they will have set a precedent and a benchmark for a sport aiming to clean up a dented image.
