Putin laughs last
And it's all kicking off as rugby and football battle for eyeballs and dollars
Russia did not compete at Tokyo 2020, but Russian athletes won 189 medals to finish 5th in the Olympics and 4th in the Paralympics. President Putin hosted Red Square homecoming celebrations where the State Anthem of the Russian Federation rang out and national flags flew. If anyone was feeling punished for Russian doping outrages, it was probably those who had sweated buckets in their pursuit of Russia rather than their quarry itself. Was the ‘ban’ worth the effort?
Immediately after the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Russia stood 3rd in the table with 72 medals. At the same point four years later, its London tally was 82 for a 4th place ranking. Those Games though came before the watershed of Russia’s 2014 home winter Olympics in Sochi.
The revelation of systematic, state-sponsored doping at Sochi eventually led to Russia’s banishment. A net 26 medals have been struck from the nation’s original Beijing and London tallies as a result of retrospective drugs bans. But now, competing under the name of the Russian Olympic Committee, the country’s Olympians still garnered 71 medals in Tokyo - just one fewer than in Beijing. Its Paralympians, moreover, did markedly better this summer than at those two earlier Games.
I had the dubious pleasure this week of reading Grigory Rodchenkov’s nauseating if compelling account of his role in Russia’s corruption of the drugs testing system at Sochi 2014. Nauseating because I could not discern a scintilla of regret in Rodchenkov’s account, nor any meaningful explanation for his turning whistle-blower, beyond self-preservation.
His book, The Rodchenkov Affair, nevertheless stands as a warning to anyone tempted to believe that Russia might be persuaded to undergo a Damascene doping conversion. The country duped WADA for years, and has since led it a merry dance. It has persuaded the IOC to take a super-soft approach - hence athletes still appearing in red, blue and white for the ROC and merely being denied their flag and anthem.
“After 24 hours of considering the situation, I have decided not to accept the £3,000 for my book, The Breath of Sadness, as a prize for it being a shortlisted title.” Journalist Ian Ridley’s protest on learning that Rodchenkov’s book had been awarded the 2020 William Hill Sports Book of the Year
The IPC very bravely risked its vital relationship with the IOC by imposing an outright ban on Russia for Rio 2016, but has since fallen into step with its Olympic big brother.
All that might now prevent Russia making a full, smug return at Paris 2024 is a slew of post-Tokyo failed drugs tests when stored samples of athletes’ fluids are re-analysed to utilise advances in anti-doping science.
World Athletics was painfully slow to grasp the nettle of Russian cheating when its sheer scale first became apparent in 2015. But to his credit once the penny eventually dropped, WA’s president Seb Coe adopted a hard-line stance that should shame the IOC if only it were capable of that emotion. Effectively, WA now applies its own vetting process before allowing individual Russian athletes to compete internationally.
And the results are clear to see. Russians won only two track & field medals in Tokyo. In Beijing and London the totals were 17 and 19 before later drugs busts cut them to 10 and 8 respectively (although even the World Athletics website struggles to keep up with the bans, still showing 10 medals for London).
Athletics, of course, has a bigger doping problem than most sports, and it is only right that it is devoting significant resources to pursuing cheats. But Rodchenkov’s account is a reminder that a wide range of sports are vulnerable.
Unless the IOC pumps significantly more of its riches into the anti-doping fight, whether through WADA or in support of individual sports’ own initiatives, it will continue to play catch-up with those who take it for a fool.
No nation is without doping problems, not Britain and certainly not the United States, but the challenge of rooting out rogue elements is far less daunting than confronting a rogue state. Especially one that will be eyeing the Los Angeles 2028 Games as an opportunity to hear its State Anthem ring out as often as possible on American soil.
It wouldn’t be unfair for the anti-doping authorities to target Russian sportsmen and women over the coming years. It would be unfair on everyone else not to. And yes, the effort would be worth it.
It’s all kicking off #1
World Rugby 12s anyone? The surprise announcement of a new competition next summer involving the world’s leading rugby union stars in a tweaked version of the game has put the sport in a spin. Its franchise model has drawn comparison with cricket’s The Hundred. But this was spawned by England’s governing body. 12s is entirely independent and its leaders have confirmed they have yet to have formal discussions with rugby’s authorities. In that sense it has more of a whiff of Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket challenge to the cricketing establishment.
It’s all kicking off #2
FIFA fancies biannual World Cups. No surprise there, nor that the rest of the football world objects. One can imagine the IOC quivering too at the prospect of going head-to-head with football’s flagship product in the sponsorship and broadcast markets. I’ve always thought there was something magical about Olympics and World Cups only appearing every four years, and steering clear of each other. But romance isn’t the driving force here, so expect a prolonged and acrimonious tussle before FIFA eventually gets its way, to the detriment of many.
It’s all kicking off #3
The Women’s Super League has moved up a gear. The BBC has proudly trumpeted a peak of 800,000 viewers for Everton v Manchester City last weekend. A solid start to the season. The challenge will be to consolidate and then grow this into a committed audience. The threat the WSL poses isn’t to other corners of football but to other sports. There is only so much capacity for sport on terrestrial television and, for all the noise, streaming services have yet to prove a valuable proposition for those sports forced to seek an audience on YouTube - esports excepted.