Nikita Kamaev was the former executive director of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency, or Rusada, who died of a suspected heart attack two months after leaving his post amid Russia's doping scandal. “I'd never heard him complain of anything to do with his heart,” said the former Rusada general director, Ramil Khabriev.
Kamaev and Khabriev resigned from Rusada in December as the Russian Sports Ministry pushed for the agency to carry out reforms under new leadership. That came a month after Rusada was stopped from conducting drug tests when the World Anti-Doping Agency declared it non-compliant with anti-doping rules. A Wada commission accused Rusada of covering up cases of doping by leading Russian athletes, giving them advance knowledge of supposedly surprise tests and allowing banned athletes to continue competing.
Kamaev was the day-to-day head of Rusada from 2011 until his resignation in December. The day after the Wada report emerged accusing Rusada of covering up doping, he made a vehement defence of the organisation, saying that it had been fighting drug use effectively and claiming that the commission had produced a biased report based on unreliable testimony from athletes who had been caught doping.
“Some of the issues have a particular acuteness and are, if you like, politicised,” he said at the time. Accusations that agents from Russia's FSB security service infiltrated the doping lab for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi were the product of an “inflamed imagination”, he added. His death came less than two weeks after the death of another former Rusada figure, founding chairman Vyacheslav Sinev, who left the agency in 2010.
Nikita Kamaev, sports executive: born 1964; married; died 14 February 2016.
