Russia’s sporting reputation was in tatters and drug cheats around the world put on notice on Wednesday as an emboldened World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) vowed to step up the war on performance-enhancing drugs.
WADA capped a big two weeks for their cause, and a miserable one for Russia, by suspending the country’s anti-doping agency on the back of an independent commission report that uncovered evidence of state-sponsored doping and cover-ups.
The suspension of Russia’s anti-doping agency, RUSADA, completed a non-compliance hat-trick.
Photo: EPA
The Moscow laboratory implicated in the cover-up has been decertified, while the Russian athletics federation, ARAF, was banned last week by the world governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations.
The commission, led by former-WADA head Dick Pound, generated plenty of buzz at Wednesday’s board meeting as the world-doping authority signaled a possible change in the way it does business going forward.
“I’m not sure they [WADA] realized they had the muscle until we got our teeth into some reliable evidence and followed up on it and came out with a report with recommendations,” Pound said. “Maybe that’s the new WADA. Maybe we could have gotten there sooner if we had known how to deal with the kind of information that was coming from whistle blowers. Once we got some hard evidence, some audio, visual recordings, there you are now we’ve got something and we know where to go and how to pursue it. Maybe that’s WADA II.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier