When the World Anti-Doping Agency’s executive committee voted in September to reinstate Russia’s corrupted antidoping laboratories, WADA’s own athletes committee blasted the decision, and warned of what might come.
“Having seen the conditions change once, we have little assurance in them not changing again,” the committee said in a statement, criticizing WADA for letting Russia off the hook even though it had not yet met key requirements of a compliance agreement.
Two weeks into the new year, the athletes’ concerns look prescient. After two days of meetings in Montreal, a special WADA committee charged with overseeing Russian compliance held off on making any official recommendation, even though Russia has yet to turn over data it said it would.
The committee’s options ranged from recommending nothing to recommending harsh sanctions, but James Fitzgerald, a WADA spokesman, said the decision was made to make no recommendation because WADA currently has a team in Russia trying to collect computer data on the country’s drug testing program that Russia was supposed to deliver by the end of last year. Collecting that data was supposed to take three days; Wednesday was day seven of the effort.
Fitzgerald said not making an official recommendation was a precaution because the committee “did not want to do anything that could potentially put the mission at risk and wanted to have confirmed information from the team before finalizing their position.”
Fitzgerald said the WADA representatives seeking the computer data were making “excellent progress” and the organization would “expect the mission to be completed soon but it’s not possible at this stage to give an exact time.”
The delay is sure to raise concerns among athletes who have pilloried WADA for months, arguing that Russia has thumbed its nose at WADA’s efforts to punish the country for too long.
The latest controversy involves Russia’s promise to hand over computer data on about 10,000 suspicious doping samples by Dec. 31. But successive WADA teams sent to Moscow were rebuffed by Russian law enforcement, and the deadline passed without WADA receiving any of the data. A number of WADA critics called for the country to immediately be declared noncompliant.
A three-person WADA team was finally allowed into the laboratory last week.
After the meetings this week, both Fitzgerald and committee chair Jonathan Taylor, a lawyer based in London, declined to say what the committee would recommend.
The compliance review committee was supposed to provide its recommendation to WADA’s ruling executive committee by Thursday, which would allow the executive committee a few days to digest the recommendation before its own meeting to decide what to do about Russia next week.
The special review committee may miss that deadline as well.
“It is taking longer than had been originally estimated but the team is facing no specific issues or difficulties in carrying out their task,” Fitzgerald said of the efforts to collect the computer data, whose integrity still has to be verified, a process that will take months. “The quantity and complexity of the data, as well as the fact the servers and hard drives being accessed are not all brand-new, means it is simply taking longer than originally anticipated.”
Taylor has repeatedly said that WADA must follow the proper procedures to ensure that any possible sanctions can survive Russian legal challenges.
Taylor’s committee wants either the data, “or else a ban that will stand up in court,” he wrote earlier this month in a response to Swedish biathlete Sebastian Samuelsson’s withering criticism.
In an interview last week, Taylor emphasized that WADA has to use its declaration of noncompliance as a last resort. Russian recalcitrance wasn’t unusual, he said, as compliance with WADA rules is often achieved at the last minute.
“If we are going to treat RUSADA equally with everyone else,” he said, using the acronym for the Russian Antidoping Agency, “then you let them comply late.”
Dick Pound, the founding president of WADA and author of a 323-page report on Russian doping, agreed. “When you are looking at the bigger picture, what really is important is that we get the data and access to samples,” he said in a phone interview Monday night. “And we are in the process of getting access to the samples.”
Pound also warned that Russia might be trying to outlast and outspend WADA with expensive and time-consuming legal challenges. Pound suggested WADA’s antidoping code might need to be revised so that sanctions can go into effect after violations are confirmed, “regardless of whether there are legal proceedings.”
That wouldn’t do anything in this case, of course. WADA did sanction Russia, but chose to remove the sanctions before the country had complied with all of the requirements for reinstatement.
Email Kevin Draper at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter: @kevinmdraper.
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