The British Olympic Association shares the concerns of the 591 UK athletes who wrote to the World Anti-Doping Agency urging it to do more to tackle drugs cheats but insists the Rio Games will be safeguarded for clean athletes.
As the Guardian revealed on Monday, British athletes have become increasingly concerned with Wada’s ineffectiveness, particularly over its dealing with Russia. In a private letter – backed by Goldie Sayers and Paula Radcliffe among others and passed to the Wada president, Sir Craig Reedie – they urged the anti-doping body to do everything within its power to ensure athletes lining up in Rio would be confident of a clean Games.
The BOA chief executive, Bill Sweeney, said he is sympathetic to their views but is confident sports bodies are stepping up their efforts to catch athletes who use performance-enhancing drugs.
“Our athletes want to compete on a level playing field and the letter shows they are encouraging Wada and the IAAF to take the strongest possible actions they can to clean up the situation,” said Sweeney at an event to mark 50 days before the Olympic Games begin on 5 August. “We all want to make sure the Games are safeguarded for clean athletes and the fact there is retrospective testing going on shows how seriously the International Olympic Committee is taking it. Nobody wants to see unfair advantages in sport and I believe the Games will be protected for the clean athletes.”
Sweeney refused to say whether he believed Russian track and field athletes should be allowed back into international competition when the IAAF, athletics’ governing body, meets to decide their fate in Vienna on Friday.
“It is really not for us to say what the decision should be or what we would prefer it to be as long as the right decision is made,” he said. “If there are Russians competing in the Games, we are pretty confident they will have been heavily tested and you’d believe they are competing in the right circumstances.”
Sweeney also called for more money to be found to ascertain the identity of the Operation Puerto blood bags that were released to anti-doping authorities by a Spanish judge on Tuesday. “It would be a good thing,” he said. “It is a bit like finding criminals after the emergence of DNA testing. It sends a really clear message to athletes – you can’t hide.”
The athletes’ commission of the Russian Olympic Committee has written to the IOC president, Thomas Bach, asking him to allow athletes who have never failed a drugs test to compete in Rio.
“The right of any athlete who has never violated any of the existing rules to perform at the Olympic Games is inviolable,” they wrote in a letter signed by 10 Olympic medal-winners. “And we wholeheartedly ask for your support in compliance of this right.”
The letter told Bach that Russian athletes had always “fully and unconditionally supported” the IOC’s zero tolerance approach to the fight against doping. “We wholeheartedly support punishment for those who are trying to succeed fraudulently using banned drugs,” it added. “They must be responsible individually, because the fraud of dishonest people should not jeopardise the career of the other innocent fellow athletes and throw a stain on our country’s reputation.”
“As you know … all Russian athletes who aspire to participate in the Games in Rio will undergo at least three additional independent anti-doping tests, the team is under constant supervision of the international anti-doping authorities and no one with a history of doping will be selected for the Olympics. Please let us know what else we need to do to assure the Olympic community of our commitment to the fight against doping.
“We, the Russian athletes, hope that the great history and contribution of our country to the Olympic Games and the Olympic movement will not be threatened.”
