Dick Pound, author of the report that revealed shocking levels of doping in Russian athletics and led to the suspension of Russia’s athletics federation, says the upcoming second part of the report will be even more explosive.
In an interview with Britain’s Independent newspaper published yesterday, Pound said the next round of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) report that looks into possible corruption within the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) will be even more jolting.
“When we release this information to the world, there will be a wow factor,” former WADA president Pound told the paper. “People will say: ‘How on Earth could this happen?’ It’s a complete betrayal of what the people in charge of the sport should be doing.”
Photo: AP
The second part of the investigation delves into the IAAF and paved the way for the arrest of its former president, Lamine Diack, and ex-head of anti-doping Gabriel Dolle, and is now in the hands of French authorities.
The French authorities are looking into possible corruption within the IAAF and the results of the 15,000 blood samples which were leaked by the organization in August.
Pound, who has yet to see the analysis of blood samples while the French prosecution is ongoing into Diack, Dolle and Habib Cisse, a legal adviser at the IAAF to Diack, said studying that material would probably delay publication of the report.
“It would be nice to have it done in 2015, but it looks more likely to be January,” Pound said. “One fear is that if we issue it on the Friday before Christmas for example, no one will notice it and we want to have the maximum impact and deterrent.”
For now, Russian athletes are banned from competing internationally until complying with WADA rules, but Pound said that despite his push for a ban from next year’s Rio de Janeiro Olympics, he expects they will be allowed to take part.
“It’s my expectation that Russian athletes will be in Rio ... and I’d be very surprised if the organizations that have to declare them compliant again would not be cooperative in making that happen,” he said.
Pound vowed to keep up the fight against widespread doping.
“This is a proper fight and no matter how many sad tales you hear of tainted supplements, that’s nothing compared to the planned, organized and well-financed cheating that occurs,” he said. “That’s not accidental.”
“So we’re turning over rocks people don’t want to be turned over,” he said.
Pound said he hopes that the impact of the second part of the WADA report will spur support for the anti-doping movement and lead to funding for further probes.
“It could be the start of something good,” he said.
Kenya is one nation he singled out for such a probe after allegations of corruption by Athletics Kenya officials.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if WADA did end up doing an investigation on the ground in Kenya, especially with the level of denial from the sport and the [Kenyan] government authorities amid pretty obvious evidence,” he said.
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