By Tyler P. Henseler
Athletics, especially at the international level, are meant to transcend politics and its accompanying problems, and bring people together. At the risk of using a worn out cliché, sports are pure. When sports are tainted by the disease of “doping”, people feel cheated and betrayed by the athletes for ruining something that they believe should be untarnishable. In 2012, the United States Anti-Doping Agency (“USADA”) furnished to the public their findings of an investigation into the U.S. Postal Service Pro Cycling Team. This investigation contained information, beyond any doubt, that the team ran a systematic, covert, and wildly successful doping scheme that they used to their advantage in international competition. Most famously, Lance Armstrong, a member of the team, did not contest the mountain of evidence against him that doping was integral in his athletic success, including sworn testimony of 11 of his teammates. He accepted the lifetime ban from the sport of pro-cycling and relinquished any awards earned after 1998. The scandal was met with public outrage — hence the swift and harsh punishments — and with even the most attenuated fans of the sport left feeling cheated. The U.S. cycling scandal was called, “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.” This statement, made in 2012, rang true until the summer of 2015.
The 2014 Winter Olympic Games were held in Sochi, Russia from February 7th to February 23rd. As the host country, Russia built massive complexes to house the thousands of world class athletes, whose competitions would fill the even more extravagant stadiums built in honor of the quadrennial Olympics. In return for their massive investment, estimated to range from $23 billion to as high as $50 billion, Russia took home the most combined medals out of any other country in the world, topping the list with 33 Olympic medals. This bested even the U.S. Olympic team, which brought a respectable 28 total medals back across the Atlantic.
This “home-team” victory was short lived. In 2015, Russia was handed one of the most severe punishments the International Olympic Committee (“IOC”) has the power to impose: a total, indefinite ban for athletes competing in international competition under the Russian flag. This ban was in response to the positive tests for performance-enhancing, banned substances, or “doping”, of dozens of Russia’s athletes, including 15 medal winners. This ban encompassed, most notably, the then upcoming 2016 Summer Olympic Games which were held in Rio de Janero.
Russian doping was not just widespread, but systematically imposed by the state to ensure dominance at the games. The state-appointed coordinator was Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the subject of the Oscar-winning Documentary Icarus, directed by Bryan Fogel. In the documentary, Fogel started experimenting with doping to see how successful he could become in the amateur long distance cycling circuit. He contacted Dr. Rodchenkov at first only for guidance, but happens upon the largest state-run doping scandal ever discovered. Dr. Rodchenkov had to be rushed out of the country to avoid assassination and was put in witness protection so that he could survive to testify.
Acting as a whistleblower, Dr. Rodchenkov revealed that he and his team of chemists broke into the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (“RUSADA”) facility on the eve of testing at Sochi and replaced dozens of Russian athlete’s blood samples tainted with a cocktail of three banned substances Rodchenkov had concocted and tested their effectiveness on himself, with clean samples taken months earlier. Working undercover of darkness, working under the light of a single lamp, they passed the samples through a small hole in the wall and broke and resealed the supposedly unbreakable seals on the sample containers. Rodchenkov asserted that this had gone on before the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London as well, where Russia won 70 total medals. He also said that, although he painstakingly created the doping cocktail, he never administered it and instead handed it directly to Russia’s sports ministry. The Russian sports ministry then oversaw the distribution of the drugs, meaning the government was directly involved in the scandal.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (“WADA”) acts as the police force charged with regulating athletes competing in international competition. They act as the doping regulatory branch of the IOC, and they conduct investigations and impose punishment where they find violations. The indefinite ban of the entire Russian program, while a sweeping measure, was a suitable remedy given the systematic nature and sophistication of the scandal. These seemingly harsh sanctions proved fairly lenient considering the blatant violation of the rules. Russian athletes were still allowed to compete as early as the 2016 Summer Olympics. They competed as “Independent Athletes”, who were from Russia, at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Peyong Cheng. The only factor restoring Russia from full Olympic participation was the name on the jersey, as the “independent athletes” wore generic uniforms.
Just recently, in September 2018, the IOC fully reinstated Russia’s good status, allowing them to return back to international competitions. Apparently, the WADA believes that a mere three-year suspension from international competition was punishment enough for the most aggressive and pervasive violation of anti-doping regulations of all time. In comparison, Lance Armstrong received a lifetime ban from professional cycling for systematically imposing performance enhancing banned substances onto his teammates to get ahead in the sport. The country of Russia sanctioned and mandated the consumption of a sophisticated cocktail of banned substances and then systematically covered it up under the cover of night in nearly all winter sports at Sochi. This is not the first time they had been involved with doping. They had also been implied by the International Association of Athletics Federations (“IAAF”) in retroactive testing from 2001 to 2009 as having the highest amount of positive test results out of any other country during any other eight-year stretch. The U.S. Postal Service Professional Cycling team’s actions shocked the world in 2012, but so much greater in magnitude is the Russian doping scandal. For Russia to be fully reinstated to its former status after only a three-year hiatus is almost unbelievable.
Russia’s reinstatement is not completely unbelievable, considering Russia is traditionally high atop the medal charts in both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games. WADA, as a branch of the IOC, clearly succumbed to the pressure from administrators to lift the ban from international competition. As long as WADA remains a functioning entity of the IOC, inherent problems with the agency will exist. Pressures from top officials, influence from large countries, and popular opinion, seemed to be all heavily motivating forces in the actions of the IOC. However, WADA and IOC’s functions are so different that their unification is bordering on intolerable to rule-abiding athletes around the globe. The IOC receives bids for the sites of upcoming Olympic Games years in advance; they are perpetually involved in a bidding war with some of the most powerful countries in the world. These economic and political pressures from the bidding wars make the IOC a biased party in anti-doping regulation enforcement. Russia has not served their penance with a measly three-year ban from competition. The union of the IOC and WADA opens the door for speculation that the economic pressures from a country, as prominent on the Olympic stage as Russia, had a role in the glaring leniency of their punishment for such egregious violations.
An easy solution to the repeated abuse of the current system is to separate WADA and the IOC. WADA testing and punishments should be completely insulated from the slightest possibility of outside influence. Removing any possibility of bias from the world’s most prominent anti-doping agency is the only way to ensure that WADA remains the neutral policing entity per the purpose of their creation. Instead of leaving themselves open to the pressures that its alignment with the IOC brings, WADA should distance themselves from IOC to eradicate doubt cast upon its investigations and restore integrity to its proceedings.
In response to Russia’s recent reinstatement into Olympic competition, many prominent athletes from around the world have spoken out against the decision. While high performing, successful, and rule abiding athletes will always be the best promoters of clean competition at the international level, a stronger, less vulnerable WADA could also play a large part in helping international sports at the highest level to remain pure.
Tyler Henseler is a 2L at Suffolk University Law School, Tyler attended Stonehill College for undergraduate school, where he earned a degree in history and was captain of the cross-country team for two years. A current teaching assistant for a 1L Civil Procedure class, Tyler hopes to practice as a litigator in Boston, MA.
Source Link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/sports/russia-doping-sochi-olympics-2014.html?module=inline
See also:
https://www.bbc.com/sport/45565273
https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/20/sport/russia-doping-wada-decision/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/opinion/editorials/russia-olympics-anti-doping.html