“WADA, the IOC, and the Russians: Can Anti-Doping Survive in the Era of Putin?"

John Hoberman

Over the past several years the politics of international sports governance, and its affiliated anti-doping efforts, have been subverted by the de facto dictator of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, in conjunction with his conflicts, and subsequent reconciliations, with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Following Russian failures at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games, an enraged Putin resolved to produce a 2014 Sochi Winter Olympiad that would compensate for the disgrace of Vancouver. Once it had been uncovered, the state-sponsored doping conspiracy that helped to produce Russian success at Sochi compelled the IOC and WADA to suspend Russian sports organizations’

membership in the “Olympic Family.” The question now was how and when — and, conceivably, whether — Russia’s readmission to the Olympic system might be achieved.

The IOC’s capitulations to the Russians in 2014 and 2018 confirm both the longtime moral bankruptcy of the IOC and the special role Putin and his ties with IOC-President Bach and other international sports officials have come to play in the politics of the international anti-doping campaign. Putin is the most powerful of the political authoritarians who occupy an increasing number of influential positions in global sports organizations. What is more, Putin has injected an unprecedented gangster element into anti-doping. In February 2016, two former executives at RUSADA dropped dead without explanation. The Russian whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov fled to the United States fearing assassination by Putin’s agents and is in witness protection. The young Russian whistleblowers  Vitaly Stepanov, his wife Yulia Stepanova, and their small son are also in the U.S. witness protection program. It is widely speculated that Putin has sent police agents to find and harm these Russian exiles.

In February 2018, WADA announced it could not protect anti-doping whistleblowers.

This humiliating concession to Putin pointed to the steady decline of WADA’s stature — the only organization that can (given a determined leadership) stand up to the IOC and its traditional authoritarian allies. History shows that the IOC has never encountered a dictatorship with which it will not do Olympic business, and the current period is no exception to this rule.

WADA’s readmission of Russia to international competition in September 2018 has been widely criticized as a betrayal of anti-doping and of clean athletes.

In January 2018, WADA’s foundational president Dick Pound had criticized the IOC for not punishing Russia strongly enough for its Olympic doping. A year later, however, Pound denounced criticism of WADA’s latest capitulation to the Russians — ignoring its own deadlines for Russian compliance — as the work of a “lynch mob.” The decisions by Pound and WADA to accommodate Russian intransigence signal the end of WADA’s effective authority and the further ascension of authoritarian politicians and amoral sports bureaucrats to the upper echelons of global sports governance. In these dire circumstances, the anti-doping project is doomed to fail.