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Travis Tygart: Time To Lance The Boil As WADA Investigations Trip Beyond Track
- Updated: May 26, 2016
Editorial
“For those who love clean sport, discovering the extent of Russia’s state-supported doping program has been a nightmare realized. Russian whistle-blowers have come forward with evidence of shadow laboratories, tampering by state intelligence officers and swapped samples at the Olympics. This is a violation of the very essence of sport and – only months from the Summer Games in Rio – an assault on the fundamental values of the Olympic movement.”
So begins an editorial by Travis T. Tygart, chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, in the New York Times.
He cites the source of the story, German TV station ARD, journalist Hajo Seppelt and team; he cites the whistleblowers we gave our SwimVortex Courage Cup to in December 2014, Vitaly Stepanov, a former Rusada antidoping official, and his wife, Yulia, a middle-distance runner who tested positive but could have had all of that set aside without the world knowing if she’d have tapped into the corruption and cover-up at the heart of Russian sport.
The latter had its hand on Russian Swimming, too, and good people helped to fend it off as best they could. There be more in that soon, together with the reasons why FINA president Julio Maglione is not fit for the job of chief guardian of global swimming and should step down.
One of those reasons is his view that investigation threatens the reputation of FINA. Here is a man who has been in a key seat of influence and power for decades among those who have let the waves of doping woe and victims on both sides of the coin stamped with the word “ABUSE” wash through the sport with storm force.
Decades. Decades in which he and all those around him on the top table could have made clear their position but preferred to let sleeping dogs like Dr Lothar Kipke, lie, their FINA silver pins for ‘services to swimming’ failing to prick the conscience of those who could and should have done something about it, national federations included.
The dogs are waking, rabies-ridden and sharp in tooth.
Time may well heal but it also the realm in which mould forms and rot sets in. Tygart makes the point in his editorial that the Stepanovs had been warning WADA of the Russian problem for four years before the ARD documentary. The wheels turned slowly before the WADA Commission of inquiry put its foot down.
As the USADA boss puts it ” …the agency was moved to act only after the German documentary” and a “deeply rooted culture of cheating” was confirmed.
Tygart then turns to the burning question: June 17, the day when the International Association of Athletics Federations decide whether to let Russian track and field back into the race in time for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
USADA has, quite rightly, been calling for a comprehensive investigation of all Russian sport, beyond just track and field, since the November revelations.
There can be no question that that is required. The Times and this website showed how the rogues working at the heart of track and field, including the likes of Dr Sergei …
continue reading in source www.swimvortex.com
