Showing posts with label doping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label doping. Show all posts

Sunday, 24 July 2016

Putin is smiling tonight: His friend IOC President Bach fixed Russian participation in the Rio Olympics

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is smiling tonight. His friend, the German President of the IOC Thomas Bach, did what he was asked to do:

The Russian flag will be flying at the Summer Olympics, after all, as the International Olympic Committee decided Sunday that athletes from the nation mired in an ongoing drug scandal will be allowed to compete on the sporting world’s largest stage next month in Rio de Janeiro.
Less than two weeks before the start of the Rio Games, the International Olympic Committee ruled against barring Russia from the Summer Olympics but did approve measures that could reduce the number of Russian athletes participating.

Here is how sports, business and "friendship" mix in Bach´s world:

Bach has been a regular visitor to Russia in his three years as head of the IOC, both before and after the Sochi Olympics. Putin has also shown himself willing to travel to improve contacts with the IOC, giving a well received speech in 2007 in Guatemala — delivered in English, which is rare for Putin — ahead of the vote which gave Sochi the 2014 Olympics.
Since he won Olympic gold in 1976, Bach’s chosen sport of fencing has been transformed, most recently by Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, a Putin ally who has pumped large sums of his own money into the sport over eight years as president of the International Fencing Federation.
That money has increased the profile of one of the more niche sports on the Olympic program, making for a bigger media presence and glitzier competitions.
Bach also has business connections in Russia. After becoming president of the IOC, he kept his other role as chairman of the supervisory board of Weinig, a Germany company which produces woodworking machinery. Weinig, which did not respond to requests for comment, has a strong presence in Russia, with a headquarters near Moscow and offices across the country.
Besides Bach, several other influential IOC members have long been sympathetic to Russia.

Thursday, 21 July 2016

Putin´s mafia state will not host the football World Cup 2018

It is becoming more and more obvious that Putin´s mafia state will not host the football World Cup in 2018. Vladimir Putin bought the cup through massive corruption, which in itself should be enough to move the games to a more civilized environment. Now there is the case of massive Russian state sponsored doping:

Russia’s hosting of the World Cup is becoming increasingly problematic for FIFA’s leaders after the International Olympic Committee withdrew support for sporting events being staged in the doping-tainted nation.
The IOC’s move followed this week’s second damning World Anti-Doping Agency report, which accused Russia of state-sponsored doping.
The scandal landed at FIFA’s door after Russian football was for the first time implicated in the alleged doping cover-up by a country that has been entrusted with football’s most prestigious event in 2018.
Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko, whose department is accused of orchestrating the deception, is also head of the country’s football federation and is a member of FIFA’s ruling council.
Football’s governing body is standing by the 2018 hosts – just as it has done throughout six years of scrutiny since the contentious vote to hand the World Cup to Russia for the first time.
“Preparations for the World Cup are in full swing,” Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, said Wednesday. “FIFA said yesterday that they are preparing for the World Cup to be held in Russia.”
And 2018 is not the only countdown. FIFA is less than 11 months from staging the Confederations Cup, an eight-team warm-up competition, in Russia.
Dick Pound, the former WADA president who authored the earlier report on doping in Russian track and field, said FIFA now has another “credibility issue” to confront following McLaren’s findings.

Tuesday, 24 May 2016

Putin´s Russia should be banned from all international sports events

Russia under Putin should be banned from all international sport events after this:

Dozens of Russian athletes at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, including at least 15 medal winners, were part of a state-run doping program, meticulously planned for years to ensure dominance at the Games, according to the director of the country’s antidoping laboratory at the time.
The director, Grigory Rodchenkov, who ran the laboratory that handled testing for thousands of Olympians, said he developed a three-drug cocktail of banned substances that he mixed with liquor and provided to dozens of Russian athletes, helping to facilitate one of the most elaborate — and successful — doping ploys in sports history.
It involved some of Russia’s biggest stars of the Games, including 14 members of its cross-country ski team and two veteran bobsledders who won two golds.
In a dark-of-night operation, Russian antidoping experts and members of the intelligence service surreptitiously replaced urine samples tainted by performance-enhancing drugs with clean urine collected months earlier, somehow breaking into the supposedly tamper-proof bottles that are the standard at international competitions, Dr. Rodchenkov said. For hours each night, they worked in a shadow laboratory lit by a single lamp, passing bottles of urine through a hand-size hole in the wall, to be ready for testing the next day, he said.
By the end of the Games, Dr. Rodchenkov estimated, as many as 100 dirty urine samples were expunged.
None of the athletes were caught doping. More important, Russia won the most medals of the Games, easily surpassing its main rival, the United States, and undermining the integrity of one of the world’s most prestigious sporting events.
“People are celebrating Olympic champion winners, but we are sitting crazy and replacing their urine,” Dr. Rodchenkov said. “Can you imagine how Olympic sport is organized?” 

Corruption pervades everything in Putin´s kleptocracy. This rotten mafia state does not deserve to be part of any civilized international co-operation. That´s why Russia should be banned from the Rio Olympic games. And, of course, FIFA (with its own corruption problems) should not allow Russia to host the football World Cup.