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Doping verdict against Russia: Not being there is everything

2019-12-09T17:50:01.516Z


Must Russia serve as the scapegoat of world sports? No, the anti-doping agency has done with its judgment, what to expect from her. The World Cup and Olympic suspension may only be the beginning.



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The reactions to the decision of the World Anti-Doping Agency Wada were predictable, and they did not last long: The Russians announced that they would take legal action against the ruling that their athletes would be excluded from major international events for four years. That is their right.

It is understandable that the Russian sport does not readily accept the verdict and instead exhaust all possibilities of overturning the Wada slogan. However, Rusada boss Jurij Ganus himself assumes that the decision will endure.

Not much will change with today's verdict on the current status - because the Wada leaves a lot of athletes a loophole, which may and may continue to participate as "neutral athletes" in the Olympic Games and World Championships. So it remains above all the renunciation of hymn and flag, which meets Russia on a symbolic level. A complete ban on Russia was once again bypassed. This consequence, the Wada did not dare.

However effective the decision may be, at another level the reaction is expected to fail: those in social media and in readers' forums complain that Russia has to serve as a scapegoat. It's always against the Russians, what about the Americans, what about the Jamaicans? It is the tone that resonates, a whisper, since Russia has targeted the Dopingermittler: Is not measured here with two levels?

No, it will not.

Any mistrust of the world is needed when it comes to the years of ineffective doping controls at the Jamaican sprinters in their home, when the runners from the former Nike training camp in Oregon USA perform at their best, when Chinese swimmers from the Do not show up at big competitions, scoop up medals and then disappear from the scene again. Doping is a systemic component of world sports, and if athletes are not caught, it may just say that in some places, doping is smarter than elsewhere.

No need to apologize

But all this is not a relief for the delinquent Russia, there is no reason to put the measures against Russian sport in the vicinity of a conspiracy theory. There is no excuse that tricking and cheating in sports elsewhere is the cause of systematic and widespread doping in Russia over the years, and the backlog of the infrastructure and the tools of government agencies, not just selectively, but in general , All this has been proven by the McLaren report on many pages. This was confirmed by the statements of whistleblowers Stepanova and Rodchenkov. Nowhere else is doping in a country so well and meticulously documented.

The verdict of Wada is therefore not on a clay pedestal, the number of clues, the evidence, the statements - all this justifies this verdict: In Russia, doping was firmly anchored in the sports system. And when it was revealed, it was obviously trying to cover up, falsify data. Summing up all that, today's decision is even mild. It has nothing to do with Russophobia.

Offender remains perpetrator

The accusation that an example is being set here because it is so easy to transfer all evil to Russia confuses the role of perpetrator and victim. In addition, Russia's sports officials counted for many years the most influential and powerful in world sports, almost every major sporting event has been awarded in the past decade, sometimes to Russia, the Olympic Games, the World Cup, Formula 1.

Russia's sport was one of the biggest profiteers of the functionary system in the big federations. IOC boss Thomas Bach and the Fifa bosses Joseph Blatter and Gianni Infantino really have not noticed by maximum distance to the Russian sport. The anti-doping investigators could have made it easier than focusing on Russia.

Of course, also doped elsewhere. And the view must be directed just as naturally where suspicions exist. For example, Kenya, the USA, China, other major sporting powers. Operation Aderlass this year has also shown that even the Germans have no great reason to point their finger at others. The Wada decision against Russia can therefore only be a start, doping even more consistent, even more intense approach to punish Doper much harder. It's just a start, there's a lot of compromise in it. But he is still a beginning.

Source: spiegel

All sports articles on 2019-12-09

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