Dope and hope

There are many loopholes in WADA's Russia ban

At first glance, the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA’s) dramatic four-year ban on Russia from participating in major sporting events such as the 2020 Olympics appears to be an appropriately draconian act following revelations of a state-sponsored doping programme for its athletes. A closer inspection, however, suggests that the country could well escape the punitive intent of the ban with plenty of help from world sporting bodies. The discoveries that led up to the ban following long months of investigations — chiefly thanks to information from a whistleblower, a former senior official in the programme — have been shocking. For instance, for the 2014 Winter Olympics held in Sochi in southern Russia, the Federal Security Service developed a way to reopen sample bottles to replace tainted urine samples. Some years before that, athletes were administered a cocktail of banned performance enhancing drugs in alcohol (apparently to mask their presence).

 
Going forward, though, the proof of the efficacy of this ban lies in how well it is enforced.  But the escape clauses appear to be ready at hand. Many commentators have pointed out that the ban isn’t “total”. Russian athletes who can prove that they are “clean” will be allowed to compete in global events in their “individual” capacity. Thus, for instance, Russia was officially banned from the Pyeongchang winter games in 2018 but 168 of them competed on this basis. The team called “Olympic Athletes from Russia” even won Gold in the men’s ice hockey event. WADA is yet to provide a credible explanation as to how an individual athlete can be considered distinct from the sports administration of the country she represents. The Russian football team will be permitted to compete in the Euro 2020, Russia being one of the 12 host countries for a group stage match and a quarter-final. The loophole FIFA, world football’s governing body, has exploited is that the European Championship is a regional, not a global, tournament and, therefore, outside the purview of the WADA ban. To understand the real reason for FIFA’s unwarranted benevolence, follow the money: Russian oligarchs are big spenders in European football clubs. 

 
WADA’s partial punishment in the face of incontrovertible evidence offers a compelling explanation as to why doping remains rampant in world sports — especially those of the “higher, faster, stronger” variety. The regular breaching of Olympic records by athletes with unnaturally bulked up muscles generate lingering suspicions (though some muscle enhancing drugs are legally permitted). Too many leading sportspeople — from Ben Johnson to Petr Korda and Lance Armstrong to Maria Sharapova — have been caught in the doping net to allay qualms about the rampant use of banned performance enhancers in international sports. The fact that many Indian athletes follow similar regimens is an open secret to anyone who has visited the training facilities in Patiala; if they escape the noose, it’s largely because they rarely achieve great success. Though doping was banned only from the late 1960s (and steroids were banned only in 1991), poor detection methods made it possible for athletes to evade detection. Steady improvements in technology — such as those that enable testing older samples — have enabled WADA to tighten the noose. But such is the power of global corporate money in world sports that the organisation continues to regulate with as light a hand as feasibly possible. In the long run, such realism will detract from a vibrant, growing sports business.