IAAF, USA and Canada demand Russian athletes represent "no country" at Olympic games

Zenaan Harkness zen at freedbms.net
Tue Jul 19 16:29:22 PDT 2016


Further, direct from the Kremlin:

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/52537

Statement in response to the report by the World Anti-Doping Agency
July 18, 2016

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Recent events and the tense
atmosphere that has formed around international sport and the Olympic
movement involuntarily recall the situation in the early 1980s. Back
then, many Western countries, citing the deployment of Soviet troops in
Afghanistan, boycotted the Moscow Olympics. Four years later, the Soviet
Union retaliated by boycotting the Los Angeles Olympics, using the
pretext of an allegedly insufficient level of security for the Soviet
team. The result was that many Soviet and American athletes and athletes
from other countries were caught up in this campaign of reciprocal
boycotts and lost the chance to add their names to world sporting
history. Their years of long and hard effort and training were in vain.
In short, people had their dreams broken and became hostages of
political confrontation. The Olympic movement found itself in a serious
crisis and faced divisions within. Later, some of the political figures
of that era on both sides admitted that this had been a mistake.

Today, we see a dangerous return to this policy of letting politics
interfere with sport. Yes, this intervention takes different forms
today, but the essence remains the same; to make sport an instrument for
geopolitical pressure and use it to form a negative image of countries
and peoples. The Olympic movement, which is a tremendous force for
uniting humanity, once again could find itself on the brink of division.

Today, so-called ‘doping scandals’ are the method used, attempts to
apply sanctions for detected cases of doping to all athletes, including
those who are ‘clean’, supposedly to protect their interests. But unlike
in the 1980s, athletes undergo very strict and comprehensive anti-doping
tests during competition and during the entire training process. Over
the last 6 months, all Russian athletes have undergone anti-doping tests
on WADA’s recommendations, with the tests overseen by the UK Anti-Doping
Agency and other anti-doping laboratories abroad.

The accusations against Russia’s athletes are based on information given
by one single person, an individual with a notorious reputation.
Criminal charges were opened against him in 2012 for violating
anti-doping laws, but there was not enough evidence against him at that
moment and the case was dropped. On June 17 this year, following his
allegations of involvement in using banned substances and information
from Russian athletes concerning extortion, a criminal case was reopened
against him in connection with the new circumstances that had come to
light. One of his close relatives, who used to work under his direction,
has already been convicted in Russia for illegal trade in anabolic
steroids. The question arises as to how much trust we can place in
arguments based solely on the allegations of people of this kind, and
how much weight can such allegations have.

The US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) and several anti-doping agencies in
other countries, without waiting for the official publication of the
World Anti-Doping Agency’s commission, have hastened to demand that the
entire Russian team be banned from taking part in the Rio de Janeiro
Olympics.

What is behind this haste? Is it an attempt to create the needed media
atmosphere and apply pressure? We have the impression that the USADA
experts had access to what is an unpublished report at the very least,
and have set its tone and even its content themselves. If this is the
case, one country’s national organisation is again trying to dictate its
will to the entire world sports community.

The officials named in the commission's report as directly involved will
be temporarily removed from their posts until a full investigation is
complete. But to be able to make a final decision on these officials’
responsibility, we ask the WADA commission to provide fuller and more
objective fact-based information so that Russia’s law enforcement and
investigative agencies can use it in their investigation. We can
guarantee that their work will be seen through to its conclusion and
that all subsequent measures will be taken in full to prevent violation
of Russian law and ensure that our country fulfils its international
obligations.

We have always taken the clear position that there is no place for
doping in sport. It endangers athletes’ health and lives and discredits
fair sporting competition. We are consistent in eliminating this
scourge, improve our national laws in this area, and cooperate openly
with the relevant international organisations and the International
Olympic Committee. We are unfailing in meeting our obligations.

Russia is well aware of the Olympic movement’s immense significance and
constructive force, and shares in full the Olympic movement’s values of
mutual respect, solidarity, fairness, and the spirit of friendship and
cooperation.

This is the only way to preserve the Olympic family’s unity and ensure
international sport’s development in the interest of bringing peoples
and cultures closer together. Russia is open to cooperation on achieving
these noble goals.



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