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Eastern Europe
February 9, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 20
five-tiered banned drug and practice list by alter- ing doses and the times when doses are admin- istered, and by replacing official urine samples with "clean" ones, which sometimes do not even belong to the same athlete.
Secondly, professional sports organisations – ranging from cycling to Formula 1 to international football and even national and international Olympic organisations – have repeatedly been discredited by corruption and cover-up scandals in recent years.
Thirdly, the significant fragmentation in the juris- diction of different sports organisations, such as the International Olympic Committee (OIC), the CAS and the WADA, which rely on fair reporting by national sports organisations, makes it incred- ibly difficult to investigate and document cases of doping or cheating.
In the wake of CAS' February 1 ruling, Thomas Bach, the IOC president, criticised CAS for its inability to produce a "reasoned decision" and threatened that his organisation would appeal the decision. CAS responded on February 5, saying that it was working on the "reasoned decision" and would publish it as soon as possible.
The IOC itself is hardly a model of consist-
ency when it comes to punishing doping. Before CAS' ruling, it had already decided to allow 169 Russian Olympians to participate in the 2018 winter competition as "Olympic Athletes from Russia", after previously ruling to ban Russia from participating in the Winter Olympics.
The Russian anthem and flag will not be displayed at PyeongChang; instead the IOC's colours
and sounds will, should Russian Olympians
win medals. In essence, the IOC punished the Russian Olympic Committee, which comprises
of bureaucrats and sports executives, but not Russian athletes. The distinction may be
important to the IOC, but in Moscow – and everywhere else – it looked like a way to save face by punishing Russia without actually doing so.
However, the issue of the Russian doping scandal raises red flags beyond its results in recent com- petitions, particularly when factoring in Russia's long-standing history with success in professional sports, and the likelihood that that success was tainted by performance-enhancing drugs.
Looking forward, Russia will be the host of this year's FIFA World Cup, which starts in June in Moscow. And while FIFA has reportedly begun proceedings to ensure that its landmark champi- onship will not be tainted by the same doping alle- gations as the Olympics, the reality is that neither FIFA, nor anyone else, has done much to punish the perpetrators of past transgressions or prevent them happening again.
Take Vitaly Mutko, for instance, Russia's former Sports Minister and current Deputy Prime Min- ister, and a key figure in the Sochi doping scan- dal, whom Rodchenkov describes as a "KGB man" with "no morals at all". The official may have allegations of foul play and even murder looming over his head, and may have been banned for life by the IOC from taking part in any Olympic events, but in Russia he has climbed the ranks in recent years. Having been promoted to deputy prime minister and made head of the 2018 World Cup organising committee, Mutko announced that he was stepping down from the latter role in Decem- ber following pressure over his alleged role in the 2014 doping scandal.
Nevertheless, the Kremlin later announced that he would continue to oversee the preparations for the event in his role as a "member of the federal government". It appears that Russian sport – and politicians – are just too hard a nut to crack with the bureaucratic and fragmented prosecution mechanisms available at the moment.