The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) published its second annual Anti-Doping Rule Violations (ADRVs) Report on Wednesday evening, revealing a number of remarkable statistics. Not all of these, however, were immediately noticeable.
There are a number of headline findings, but the data also throws up some more interesting statistics that need a bit more digging to get to.
The Men’s 100m at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea has frequently been dubbed ‘the dirtiest race in history’. The world-record winning time set by Ben Johnson was nullified two days after the race after a post-race drug test indicated steroid use. Suspicion of wider drug-use in the field was rife, as well as accusations that the eventual winner, Carl Lewis, ran illegally out of his lane.
Nightmare. A miscarriage of justice. Shocked. Manifestly unfair. A tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. A Pandora’s box.
The reaction to this morning’s news that the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has overturned the AFL tribunal’s acquittal of 34 current and former Essendon players has sent shockwaves though the sporting world. The ruling transcends a sport confined in the most part to just one country, Australia, its repercussions setting a precedent for professional sport worldwide.
Andy Brown and Isabelle Westbury
One of the most stunning revelations from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Independent Commission report, published on 9 November, was that both the WADA-accredited anti-doping laboratories in Moscow and Lausanne had destroyed athlete samples, against the specific instructions of WADA. New information relating to the role that the Director of the Lausanne Laboratory, Martial Saugy, played at the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games raises new questions about the nature and extent of his relationship with the Russian Ministry of Sport and the Moscow Laboratory.
It’s been a busy few months for anti-corruption in sport, with the on-going FIFA scandal erupting in May; resignations, corruption allegations and match-fixing trials plaguing the world of cricket; and now athletics has been mired in a scandal of its own. As the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) prepares to deliver the findings of its independent Commission’s investigations into doping and corruption allegations in athletics, with much centring around Russian athletics, here’s an update on what’s happened so far.
Isabelle Westbury 