An alleged doping cover-up that enabled Russian athletes to compete at the 2012 London Olympics was codenamed the “Total Protection Project,” an e-mail seized by prosecutors in France showed.
The e-mail was dated July 30, 2014, and sent from an address used by Valentin Balakhnichev, then head of the Russian athletics federation.
The e-mail says that officials at the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), track and field’s governing body, strong-armed Russian authorities into a doping cover-up involving Olympic and world champions.
It said the “Total Protection Project” allowed “several” Russian athletes to race in London and win medals, even though they were suspected of blood doping and should not have competed.
The scheme continued into 2013, the e-mail said.
IAAF officials later went back on the deal by pursuing doping cases against six Russian athletes, it said.
The previous month, the IAAF’s anti-doping department had informed Balakhnichev in a separate e-mail that it was pursuing suspected blood-doping cases against five Russian race walkers and a runner.
The July 30 response from Balakhnichev’s e-mail address warned of dire consequences and “a huge black spot” for the IAAF if Russian athletes were pursued and threatened to go public about the alleged cover-up.
“We will not remain silent. It was not us who started this game. It was the IAAF project and the IAAF shall be the key victim of future scandal,” the e-mail said. “We have enough evidence to prove criminal activities of the IAAF people.”
The IAAF president at the time was Lamine Diack, who is now under investigation in France on money laundering and corruption charges.
French authorities found the e-mail in a search of the Paris region home of Habib Cisse, a lawyer who was a legal adviser to Diack.
Cisse is also under investigation by French magistrates, facing a charge of receiving corrupt payments. Cisse denies wrongdoing.
In a statement posted on Facebook on Friday, Balakhnichev said he did not write the e-mail and that he believed “the correspondence was falsified.”
Balakhnichev has been banned from track and field for life for his role in the extortion of Russian marathon runner Liliya Shobukhova.
French newspaper Le Monde and German broadcaster ARD first reported on the e-mail.
Le Monde reported that another letter said to have been written by Balakhnichev in June 2014 alleged that IAAF representatives had invented the “total protection” name for the cover-up scheme.
“We think the only way to avoid an enormous scandal about the covering up of numerous anti-doping violations, implicating numerous IAAF officials, is to continue to keep the situation ‘under the table,’ as has been the case all these years,” Le Monde quoted the letter as saying.
The IAAF, now led by Sebastian Coe, said it could not comment in detail on the developments.
“It is clear we all need to get to the bottom of what has happened, which is what the French criminal investigation is doing, and we continue to assist them as required,” an IAAF statement said.
“We are taking bold steps to safeguard the sport in the future with the reforms we are introducing,” it said.
Le Monde reported that another note seized by French investigators accused one of Diack’s sons, former IAAF marketing consultant Papa Massata Diack, of asking for between 300,000 euros and 700,000 euros (US$318,000 and US$743,000) to cover up cases involving five Russian athletes, aside from Shobukhova.
Papa Massata Diack, who lives in Senegal, is wanted in France for questioning and is subject to an Interpol request for his arrest.
“I don’t remember the moment, but ever since I was a kid, that’s the first thing I loved,” two-time NBA All-Star Isaiah Thomas said of his lifelong romance with basketball. However, that journey unfolded against the limitations of his size in a game where height often dictates opportunity — a reality he confronted throughout his career. At 175cm, Thomas is less than 2cm taller than the average Taiwanese adult male, while NBA players during his career stood at about 200cm on average. Compared with the NBA’s average career length of less than five years, Thomas’ 13-season career stands out as
Hans Niemann declares he would become a “stone cold killer” in a Netflix documentary released on Tuesday about his feud with five-time classical world champion Magnus Carlsen, a pledge that injects new edge into the lingering fallout from the cheating scandal that shook elite chess. “I’m gonna be a stone cold killer the rest of my life,” the US’ Niemann says in the film. “I’m going to become the best player in the world, and no one is going to believe that now, but this clip will play over and over again in 10 years — just wait.” “I just
Dakar and Rabat have longstanding ties, but relations have been strained since the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) final, which Senegal won in mid-January before being stripped of the title, which was transferred to Morocco. Now, the AFCON trophy is something of a thorn in the two countries’ sides. On Rue Mohamed V, the street where Moroccan vendors are based in the Senegalese capital, a police van is parked. “The police have been on high alert since the Confederation of African Football [CAF] decided to award the title to Morocco, but there have been no incidents,” a local resident said.
Top seeded Jessica Pegula on Friday once again fought back from a set down to reach the WTA Charleston Open semi-finals with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 win against Russia’s Diana Shnaider. Defending champion Pegula has lost the first set in all three of her matches at the tournament so far, but again dug deep to maintain her hopes of retaining the title. The world No. 5 from the US took 2 hours, 10 minutes to defeat 19th-ranked Shnaider, relying on a formidable service game that included eight aces. Shnaider battled well in the first two sets and broke early for a 2-0 lead
RSS