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Armour: Allow Russian track whistleblower to compete in Rio Olympics

 

 

Regardless of what is decided this week about Russia’s participation at the Rio Olympics, there’s one athlete whose fate was sealed long ago.

In blowing the whistle on Russia’s widespread and state-sponsored doping program, Yuliya Stepanova effectively banned herself. Should the International Association of Athletics Federations bar Russia’s track and field team from Rio, she’s guilty by association. If the ban is lifted, she’s persona non grata in Russia, branded as a traitor and her life threatened for spilling her country’s dark and dirty secrets.  

Either way, her chances of competing in Rio fall somewhere between slim and none.

Devastating as that may be for Stepanova, a middle-distance runner who at 29 is in the prime of her career, even more troubling is the chilling message it sends to other athletes. Anyone considering sharing what he or she knows will no doubt look at her and ask why they should bother if they’re only going to be punished for it.

 

The International Olympic Committee talks a really good game about wanting to weed out drug cheats and protect clean athletes. But talk is cheap. To leave no doubt where its priorities are, the IOC must let Stepanova compete under its flag in Rio, and make clear that similar protections will be given to future whistleblowers.

 

 

“If we’re not better than we have been to the Stepanovs, there aren't going to be any whistleblowers,” Dick Pound, the former World Anti-Doping Agency president who headed the independent commission that laid bare the details of Russia’s doping program, told USA TODAY Sports' Rachel Axon. 

It was Stepanova and her husband Vitaly Stepanov, a former employee of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency, who provided evidence that showed both how the Russians were doping and the extent to which it was being done. Two years’ worth of secretly-recorded audiotapes and videotapes, along with hundreds of emails, letters and text messages.

That, in turn, led the former director of Russia’s anti-doping lab to ‘fess up to cheating at the Sochi Olympics, including an extensive doping program affecting numerous sports and a sophisticated scheme to protect Russian athletes by switching urine samples.

For their trouble, the Stepanovs were forced to flee their country, first to Germany and now to an undisclosed location in the United States. They say their lives would be in danger if they returned to Russia and, given the deaths of two former Russian anti-doping officials following the release of the independent commission report, their fears are not without merit. 

It’s true that Stepanova is a convicted cheat, banned for two years in 2013 for a doping regimen encouraged (as if she really had a choice) by her coaches and other Russian officials. But testing only catches a tiny fraction of dopers. If you want entry into the shadowy underworld of doping, to bust not just the tainted athletes but the people who make it possible, you need someone who has the key.

Be it Kelli White in the BALCO scandal, Tyler Hamilton with Lance Armstrong or, now, the Stepanovs, the IOC, WADA and the respective sport federations have had their best successes against doping when they’ve had help from the inside. Allow Stepanova to be sidelined in August, and you might as well tell future whistleblowers that the IOC and the various sports federation have as much concern for them as the folks supplying the needles and the pills. 

 

 

Besides, Stepanova has already served her time and, like it or not, the rules allow athletes who doped to return to competition after their suspensions are over.

Stepanova has pleaded to the IOC and IAAF to allow her to compete, so far to no avail. The IAAF won’t even say anything about her request, and the IOC just throws up its hands and says it’s out of its control. Which may be true for the world championships or Diamond League meets.

But these are the Olympic Games. If you’re hosting the party, you get to make up the guest list. 

The IOC has already welcomed a team of refugees, allowing them to compete under the Olympic flag after they were forced to flee their home countries because of war and other atrocities.

“These refugees have no home, no team, no flag, no national anthem,” IOC President Thomas Bach said in announcing the 10-person team.

Neither does Stepanova. Not anymore. She’s a woman without a country, an athlete with no nation to represent, because of what she did to help the anti-doping effort.

Making room for Stepanova in Rio would require very little on the part of the IOC. But if it sits idly by while the IAAF and Russia retaliate against her, she won't be the only one who pays a heavy price. 

Follow Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour            

 

 

 

 

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