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**Mr I** · 07-23-16, 11:45 PM

It's the west vs Russia

No change

**redback** · 07-24-16, 05:16 AM

Originally posted by Mr I View Post

It's the west vs Russia

No change

What do you mean by that?

***Bouncer*** · 07-24-16, 05:21 AM

id assume he means everyone country does it but Russia is being punished for not "cooperating" with recent events in Syria etc..

he may be right to a degree but they were too obvious about the way they went about their doping program.

***Bouncer*** · 07-25-16, 12:50 AM

Russian athletes will be allowed to compete in Rio despite the massive, government-sponsored doping program in that country after a decision released today by the IOC that outlines the specific conditions under which athletes will be qualified to compete.

Those conditions mostly amount to “if your sport’s governing body is OK with you, we’re OK with you.” Of course, nearly every world sport federation is busy organizing its travel to Brazil, and never expected to have to individually examine every Russian athlete—of which more than 300 were qualified to compete in Rio. Having had the buck passed to them by the IOC, it’s hard to know how most federations will respond. (Russia’s track and field athletes’ fate has already been decided by the IAAF. They’re fully banned.)

The Daily Mail had, previously, published a story announcing the IOC would fully ban Russia and that runner (and WADA whistleblower) Iuliia Stepanova would be permitted to compete under a neutral flag. Neither of those things are true.

IOC Decides Not To Ban Entire Russian Team From Olympics

**Mr I** · 07-25-16, 12:53 AM

Daily fail

***Bouncer*** · 07-29-16, 02:58 AM

Russia is holding its own Olympics for its banned athletes | For The Win

***Bouncer*** · 08-05-16, 09:46 AM

A Third Of All Potential Russian Olympians Have Been Banned

The International Olympic Committee waited until the day before the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics to make their ruling on how many Russian athletes would be allowed to compete in the Games. The protracted and diffuse process made for a logistical nightmare for some competitors, like cyclist Ilnur Zakarin, who was pulled off his flight to Rio at the last minute after finding out he was banned. Months after Russia’s massive, brazen state-run doping program was uncovered, the IOC made their final ruling tonight: 271 Russian athletes will compete at the Olympics. That’s less than the 389 Russia had hoped to enter, but certainly a healthy majority.

Track and field athletes were banned relatively early on in the process, but the IOC left much of the decision making up to the individual governing bodies of each sport. Because of the extent of Russia’s doping program, athletes had to prove their innocence rather than the burden of proof falling to the IOC. Russian Olympic Committee president Alexander Zhukov held a press conference tonight and said that, because of the ban, Russia probably has the cleanest team at the Olympics:

“The Russian team may have experienced the toughest checks of the Olympics, because they had to go through multiple tests and checked,” said Zhukov.

“So, as of now, the Russian team is probably the cleanest in Rio.”
So, which sports are Russians banned from, and which are they allowed into?

All Russian athletes competing in athletics and weightlifting are banned from Rio.

All Russian athletes competing in archery, badminton, boxing, diving, equestrian, fencing, golf, gymnastics, handball, judo, modern pentathlon, shooting, synchronized swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, triathlon, volleyball, and water polo have been cleared by the IOC and will compete.

Some Russian athletes competing in canoeing, cycling, rowing, sailing, swimming, and wrestling have been banned, while some are allowed to compete.

Long jumper Dariya Klishina will be the lone athletics competitor, although she will compete as an independent.

Yulia Efimova, who won a bronze medal in London, is still appealing her ban, and it’s not clear whether or not she’ll be able to swim. She is in Brazil currently.

The primary whistleblower in the Russian doping case, Yuliya Sepanova, will not compete.

Most of the rowing team has been disqualified (22 of 28 rowers).
Most of the swimming team was allowed to compete (only five of the 35 were banned).

Gymnast Aliya Mustafina, who won four medals in London, is clear to compete.

The entire wrestling team is clear except for Viktor Lebedev.
We’ll update this post if appeals change anything.

**Mr I** · 08-05-16, 10:01 AM

The whole thing is political smear imo

***Bouncer*** · 08-06-16, 10:24 AM

WADA Attempted to Thwart Investigation in State-Sponsored Doping by Russia

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) ignored numerous allegations of state-sponsored systematic doping by Russia and even actively attempted to thwart an investigation into the matter according to the former lead investigator for the anti-doping organization.

In an exclusive interview with David Epstein of ProPublica, former WADA Lead Investigator Jack Robertson heavily criticized current WADA President Craig Reedie for his handling of the case. Reedie was suspiciously reluctant to do anything about the allegations involving Russia. Reedie avoided any type of investigation for as long as possible.

“WADA handed the IOC that excuse by sitting on the allegations for close to a year. We knew since last August and WADA waited until May to name an independent commission to investigate all Russian sport and the lab. In November, after the first investigation press conference, [Olympic cross-country ski champion and chair of the WADA Athletes’ Committee] Beckie Scott demanded that WADA investigate other sports, not just athletics. Reedie said he’d take it under advisement, and he blew her off. WADA waited until the 11th hour, only once it was exposed to the public by 60 Minutes and the New York Times, and so the IOC could say there wasn’t enough time.”

WADA originally hired Robertson as its first lead investigator due to his experience as a former DEA Special Agent who was in charge of three of the agency's three largest anabolic steroid operations in history – Operation TKO, Operation Raw Deal and Operation Gear Grinder. Robertson understood the steroid black market and he knew that a significant number of athletes were using steroids.

When Robertson worked for the DEA, he desperately wanted to share the massive customer lists seized from steroid sources with anti-doping agencies in order to fight doping in sports.

“I want to be able to share this information with USADA so they can run their pool of names against people they've identified," Robertson once told a United States Olympic Committee (USOC) panel. "I want to do that in pro sports and collegiate sports. If an athlete is dumb enough and is cheating, they're going to pay the cost of supporting that."

However, the DEA's mission focused primarily on disrupting steroid distribution and trafficking rather than going after individual customers – even if they were high-level athletes. So Robertson relinquished his DEA badge so that he could work for WADA to catch individual steroid-using athletes.

Unfortunately, Robertson quickly learned that WADA wasn't all that interested in putting a stop to the steroid use in Russia.

“Craig Reedie, he had to be literally pressured into every investigation. Even the first one, he was reluctant despite the allegations, then the [German broadcaster] ARD documentary forced him into it. And then Reedie sent a message to the Russian ministry basically apologizing that they were being picked on. He sent an email to the Russian sports minister saying WADA had no intention of harming their friendship.”

In order to pressure WADA, Robertson was forced to leak information to the media. Specifically, Robertson leaked information to ARD German investigative reporter Hajo Seppelt and USADA CEO Travis Tygart. Seppelt published the information in the “Das Erste” documentary that forced WADA to call a special independent investigation into the allegations. Tygart wrote a letter to WADA pressuring them to act immediately on the Russian allegations.

“I had been looking at this for three years, and had gone to WADA leadership a number of times and said, ‘This cannot just be Jack versus Russia. I need manpower.’ With DEA, I had subpoena power behind me, at WADA I couldn’t compel people to talk. But they always had excuses, ‘Oh we’re getting 0% increase in our budget right now so we don’t have the money.’ And then when money did become available WADA beefed up every other department, but never investigations.”

Eventually, WADA did spend money to launch two independent commissions to investigate state-sponsored doping by Russia. Of course, by the time they got around to doing it, it was too late. The 2016 Rio Olympics were about to start and the IOC had little time to act upon the information. The IOC passed the buck to the individual sports federations that comprise the Olympics but they didn't have enough time to do anything either.

Robertson was disgusted by WADA's inaction and especially troubled by Reedie's seeming indifference to chasing steroid users and protecting clean athletes. He felt he had no choice but to go public with his experience at WADA in hopes that it can facilitate a change in leadership at WADA.

**jolter604** · 08-07-16, 10:16 AM

Damb tbol

***Bouncer*** · 08-15-16, 02:21 AM

Russia athletics suffers final disgrace as last competitor barred

Russian track and field suffered a final humiliation at the Rio Games on Saturday when the sport's governing body suspended long jumper Darya Klishina, removing from competition the nation's only athlete to have so far survived a blanket ban for doping.

The suspension, announced three days before she was due to compete, relates to new evidence uncovered by an anti-doping probe into allegations Russia ran a systematic, state-backed cheating program, said a source familiar with the matter.

Klishina defended herself, saying she was clean and was appealing against the decision to sport's highest tribunal. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) said it expected to rule on it by Monday, the eve of women's long jump qualifying round.

The 25-year-old had been given an exemption to compete in Rio while the rest of Russia's track and field team were banned from the Games by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in response to the doping allegations.

Ahead of the Games, the IAAF had deemed that the U.S.-based athlete was not involved in the doping program and had been subject to sufficient drug tests outside Russia. But the source said new evidence emerged, prompting the IAAF to pull her exemption.

"We have withdrawn her exceptional eligibility status which enables her to compete in international competitions based on new information that has been received," an IAAF official told Reuters, saying the athlete had been notified last week.

Klishina reacted strongly in a Facebook posting, suggesting she was the victim of a political conspiracy - echoing comments by President Vladimir Putin who has said clean Russian athletes have been targeted by a shadowy plot emanating from the West.

"I am a clean athlete and have proved that already many times and beyond any doubt. Based in the U.S. for three years now, I have been almost exclusively tested outside of the anti-doping system in question," she wrote.

"I am falling victim to those who created a system of manipulating our beautiful sport and is guilty of using it for political purposes.

"I cannot help but feel betrayed by a system that is not focused on keeping the sport clean and supporting rank-and-file athletes, but rather seeking victories outside sport arenas."

Russian Olympic chief Alexander Zhukov backed her up: "The situation with Darya Klishina appears to be cynical mockery of the Russian sportswoman by the IAAF."

The IAAF did not explain its decision to suspend Klishina from the Games. But her mother, Nadezhda, was cited by Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda as saying investigators claimed to have found scratches on containers used to hold her daughter's samples from the World Championships in Moscow in 2013.

A World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) probe, conducted by lawyer Richard McLaren, showed last month that Russian security officials had found a way to remove tamper-proof lids from test containers at the 2014 Sochi winter Olympics. This allowed them to swap dirty samples from Russian athletes for clean ones, but left incriminating scratch-like marks, the investigation found.

'I AM CYNICAL'

The IAAF barred the entire Russian athletics squad from the Rio Games even before McLaren released his interim findings last month, igniting world sport's biggest scandal in decades and threatening to split the Olympic movement.

Klishina was among 136 Russian athletes to appeal the ban and was the only one given the green light to compete in Rio.

The doping inquiry has cast a pall over the Games, fomenting what some have called an "anti-Russian atmosphere" in Rio and prompting the International Paralympic Committee to exclude Russia from its own Games next month.

Dmitry Shlyakhtin, head of the Russian Athletics Federation, said Russia had expected such a twist and that he thought it was unlikely the long jumper's appeal would be upheld.

"In general, I am cynical," he told Russia's R-Sport news agency.

Russia athletics suffers final disgrace as last competitor barred | Reuters

***Bouncer*** · 08-16-16, 11:13 AM

Russian doping whistleblowers imply their lives may be in danger

Aug 16th 2016 - Chicago Tribune

The two whistleblowers who helped expose Russia's systematic athletic doping program are believed to be on the run again, reportedly looking for new safe haven in the United States after their whereabouts were compromised earlier this week.

On Monday, just a day after Yulia Stepanova said her email account with the World-Anti Doping Agency (WADA) had been hacked, she and her husband, Vitaly Stepanov, spoke with reporters and detailed the gravity of their situation. In it, Stepanova seemed to imply they feared for their safety, saying, "If something happens to us, all of you should know, it's not an accident."

Speaking from an undisclosed location within the U.S., the Stepanovs' comments are the first since WADA confirmed Sunday that Yulia Stepanova's account within the organization had been broken into. According to ESPN'S Bonnie Ford, several international media outlets received an unsigned email on Saturday morning "from a private Switzerland-based group that has been supporting Stepanova and her husband Vitaly Stepanov with a fundraising effort also endorsed by several past and current prominent Olympic athletes," which detailed the hack and added another twist in a scandal that began more than two year ago when the couple exposed the inner-workings of Russia's doping system.

Yulia Stepanova, a former Russian track star who was suspended in 2013, and Vitaly Stepanov, who worked for the now-discredited Russian Anti-Doping Agency -- fled Russia with their young son in 2014 and eventually settled in the United States in 2015 after becoming informants for WADA.

On Monday, Ford posted several Tweets detailing new comments from the couple, which included speculation that WADA's current guidelines aren't prepared to handle this magnitude of doping and that the whistle should've been blown earlier.

The 30-year-old Yulia Stepanova had been planing to compete in Rio as a neutral athlete, but the International Olympic Committee denied her request in August and she declined to appeal.

***Bouncer*** · 08-16-16, 11:23 AM

America's glass house on doping

(CNN)American athletes are making noise about competing clean at the Rio Olympics. But maybe they should turn down the volume some. Because the truth is that the United States has its own less-than-proud history when it comes to doping.

Lilly King, a precocious 19 year-old swimmer, won a gold medal by besting Russia's Yulia Efimova in the 100-meter breaststroke. But King made an even bigger splash outside of the pool with her vociferous declaration that made clear she did not think Efimova should have been allowed to compete after two separate bans for doping (the second was overturned).

"You wave your finger No. 1, and you've been caught drug cheating?" King said of Efimova on NBC after their semifinal race. "I'm not a fan."
King's uncompromising stance led to a war of words with Efimova and renewed debate on whether Russia should have been allowed to compete in Rio in the first place after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) recommended its exclusion for systematic cheating over the last several years.

But the problem for King -- or any American athlete that might hope to speak for all clean competitors -- is that their own country has been one of the biggest offenders in terms of getting performance-enhancing drugs into sports.

The former East German regime began what is generally seen as the first systematic doping apparatus in the 1970s, when its swimmers swept to 11 golds at the 1976 Montreal Games after they failed to claim a single gold in Munich four years before. As The New York Times notes, after the Berlin Wall fell, documents definitively proved that the former communist state developed and oversaw a doping program that made it a sporting superpower until German reunification in 1990.

The U.S., however, didn't get left behind for long. While cheating with PEDs wasn't sponsored by the government, rampant abuse and masking of PED use were undertaken by individuals, as well as labs that were developing such designer drugs. America's own doping tidal wave took shape shortly before the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and did not finally ebb until well into the 21st century.

Some of America's biggest sporting stars were later caught, implicated or widely suspected of having used PEDs. And while a few were forced to give up medals, most of them escaped unscathed, with their hardware and reputations intact.

Indeed, for every Marion Jones -- who vacated all five medals won at the Sydney Olympics -- there's at least one Carl Lewis. One of America's most renowned sports legends, Lewis famously won the gold in the 100-meter sprint in the 1988 Seoul Olympics after Canadian Ben Johnson was disgraced for failing a drug test shortly after winning the final. The problem was that Lewis should not have been there in the first place after flunking three drug tests during the U.S. Olympic Trials only weeks earlier (he reportedly claimed it was because he had taken a herbal supplement containing a prohibited substance).

Besides Lewis, many other U.S. athletes were widely suspected of being on PEDs during the Seoul Games. Indeed, Victor Conte, who founded the BALCO lab -- linked to Jones and non-Olympic athletes such as Barry Bonds -- alleged that a number of prominent American athletes failed drug tests in Seoul, but that those results were "covered up."

Regardless, the U.S. only started random out-of-competition drug testing a year later, in 1989.

Yet serious testing of American athletes didn't start until well after the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency was formally recognized in 2001. In fact, the USADA didn't earn its chops until it ensnared Lance Armstrong, the now-defrocked seven-time Tour de France winner in 2012. Armstrong, ironically, was named by the USOC as its SportsMan of the Year four times (1999, 2001-03), honors that were not stripped unlike his cycling titles and bronze medal from the 2000 Sydney Games.

To be sure, since Travis Tygart became its CEO in 2007, the USADA has made serious inroads to clean up Olympic sports in the U.S. -- his relentless pursuit of Armstrong when all others (including the feds) have given up proved that. But America still has a long way to go in terms of chasing out of all of its drug cheats, if that's possible at all. Even in Rio, the United States has several athletes on its roster that have served lengthy drug suspensions, including 100-meter silver medalist Justin Gatlin.

What is the solution to the doping problem?

The IOC has floated the idea of automatic lifetime bans for anyone who has tested positive even once. If the United States is truly committed to drug-free competition, it should sign on to this zero-tolerance policy on its own and implore WADA and IOC to adopt it worldwide.

While athletes still deserve due process if they test positive, the lifetime ban needs to be strictly enforced if their guilt was proven beyond doubt.

Until that happens, and until the U.S. is no longer competing with athletes having served drug suspensions, Americans should be mindful about throwing stones out of their own glass houses. When it comes to doping, America hasn't always faced an unfair hand. Sometimes (and often times), the Americans were the ones dealing from the bottom of the deck.

**Scrumhalf** · 08-16-16, 11:29 AM

Well, to King's credit, she was going after individuals, not countries. She was just as critical of Justin Gatlin as she was of Efimova.

Announcement

Russia Banned From Rio 2016 Olympics Due To State-Sponsored Doping Program

Russia Banned From Rio 2016 Olympics Due To State-Sponsored Doping Program

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