By Admin – Steroidal.com
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) independent commission has accused Russia of using performance enhancers by their athletes on a massive scale.
WADA has released a damming and length report on Russia’s involvement in state sponsored doping, use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs), anabolic steroids and other growth factors. Detailed in the report is also evidence of bribery, intimidation and corruption among Russian officials.
At a press conference in Geneva on November 9, 2015, Dick Pound, the current President of the Independent Commission Investigation, presented a 323-page dossier detailing the length Russian officials and athletes had gone to cover up their criminal activity and doping.
Pound went on to state that is was worse than originally thought: “It’s worse than we thought,” he said. “This is an old attitude from the Cold War days.”
Making reference to when the East Germans rampantly used anabolic steroids and PEDs in the 1970s and 1980s, it was claimed as many as 99% of Russian athletes were using anabolic steroids and/or performance enhancers.
You would think that Russian government officials wouldn’t allow this to happen, but you’d be wrong. Apparently, they were at the heart of the cover-up.
It has been stated that Federal Agents with the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), formerly the KGB, often visited the WADA-accredited Anti-Doping Centre Moscow (ACM), posing as employees, bugging and conduction surveillance operations on WADA members and ACM staff.
This was confirmed in the WADA independent report. An ACM staff member said: “We had some guys pretending to be engineers in the lab but actually they were from the FSB.”
The man in charge of the ACM, Director Grigory Rodchenkov, in Moscow was also claimed to have destroyed and tampered with 1,417 urine and blood samples, implicating Russian athletes with doping violations.
The Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) was also implicated in bribery and corruption. Money is said to have exchanged hands openly when urine and blood samples were taken by cheating Russian elite athletes.
Senior officials at the All-Russia Athletic Federation (ARAF) extorted cash from athletes known to have been under review by the international government body of athletics – the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). In exchange for the payments, the ARAF agreed to cover-up any evidence of doping violations and cheating.
To avoid doping tests all year, Russian athletes used fictitious names so WADA officials would find it difficult to find and test Russian athletes. 800-meter runner, Yuliva Stepanova, explained how the process of avoidance worked.
“In a training camp in Portugal, our athletes simply lived under false names,” she said. “They have taken banned substances, they undertook a course of doping, and to ensure that foreign control officers did not come and test them, they provided false names.”
The Independent Commission Investigation has claimed Russia should be expelled from taking part in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. It has recommended all athletes be suspended for 12-months whilst other checks and investigations are continuing.
Whether or not Russian will be banned from the Olympics has not been decided yet.
Source:
Pound, D. (November 9, 2015). WADA receives Independent Commission’s Report into allegations of widespread doping in sport. Retrieved from https://www.wada-ama.org/en/media/news/2015-11/wada-receives-independent-commissions-report-into-allegations-of-widespread
