London - Lord Moynihan, former chairman of the British Olympic Association, has called for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to be totally reformed, blaming the lame-duck institution for the shambles that has brought Rio 2016 into disrepute.
His call came as several key figures in the International Olympic Committee reeled at the capitulation of their president Thomas Bach in failing to expel the entire drugs-mired Russian team from the Games that start a week on Friday.
Many senior IOC members hoped Bach would issue a blanket ban, only to learn that he had decided to indulge the powerful Russian community by leaving it to individual federations to decide which of the country’s athletes should compete.
Russia’s state-sponsored doping regime was uncovered with the help of whistleblower Yuliya Stepanova, an 800m runner. She has ironically been banned from competing in Rio because the IOC decided in its landmark fudge on Sunday that no previously convicted Russian cheat could take part — despite other nationalities being able to field one-time dopers, such as Usain Bolt’s American rival Justin Gatlin, who has twice failed drugs tests.
Stepanova yesterday called the decision ‘unfair’ and ‘based on wrong and untrue statements’.
Meanwhile, the world swimming federation, FINA, said that seven Russian swimmers would be excluded from Rio, including world 100m breaststroke champion Yulia Efimova, who, along with three team-mates, has served a drugs ban.
But the governing bodies of tennis, table tennis, equestrianism and archery have indicated that they are willing to accept Russian competitors.
Amid the farce, Moynihan, who as Margaret Thatcher’s sports minister was party to the 1987 Reykjavik agreement that first addressed doping internationally, believes the greatest culpability lies with the organisation that was meant to keep sport clean.
‘WADA has failed in its duty to clean athletes,’ he said. ‘The Russian whistleblowers, Stepanova and her husband (Vitaliy), sent WADA some 200 emails dating back to 2010. But WADA did not respond.
‘It was only because of journalists in Britain and on German TV that they finally, belatedly, started to take the issue seriously.
‘Now we are in the situation where international federations have just days to tackle the validity of their athletes. It puts them in an impossible situation.
‘Why has it taken six years to get to this stage?
‘This must have deep and far-reaching consequences for WADA.
‘How can the federations do this work in such a short time? The report into Russian doping is not exhaustive because (its author) Richard McLaren did not have time to complete it. Given that, there is no way the federations can be sure who is clean and who is not.
‘The report said 8,000 laboratory samples were destroyed. But was it actually 7 900? Or 7 875? Who is on the list and who is not?’
Moynihan, who as BOA chairman oversaw Britain’s record medal haul of 65 at London 2012, has a long association with the Olympic movement, having won a silver medal in rowing at the Moscow Games in 1980, as cox to the British eight.
He is now pressing in the House of Lords for a law criminalising doping. ‘The most heinous crime in sport is to defraud fellow athletes out of selection, success or a career. It requires criminalisation at national legal level for those who knowingly cheat. That is the case in Germany, France, Italy, for example, and Mexico and New Zealand, and that is what we need here.
‘To go with that we need WADA to be changed. At the moment it is riddled with conflicts of interest.’
Daily Mail