On Friday, the World Anti Doping Authority stated in a press release that progress towards meeting the full conditions for the Russian Anti Doping Agency’s (RUSADA) reinstatement to WADA had hit a roadblock. Back in September, WADA’s Executive Committee voted to readmit Russia as a compliant nation with the stipulation that certain conditions were to be met by a hard deadline of Dec. 31. At issue is WADA’s access to the Moscow Lab’s Laboratory Information...
Earlier this week, among the tumult in Washington, D.C., Senators Orrin Hatch of Utah and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, introduced the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act to the Senate. The proposed legislation is named after Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of the Russian Anti Doping Agency’s (RUSADA) Moscow Laboratory. Rodchenkov was one of several whistleblowers who helped reveal state sponsored doping in Russia. Similar legislation was introduced in June to the House, but has not...
On November 30, The International Biathlon Union (IBU) As recently as September, the IBU voted to rebuff the RBU’s application for full membership.
On November 28, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) issued a press release stating three of it’s representatives had met in Moscow with Russian officials to discuss the next steps regarding the Russian anti-doping agency’s (RUSADA) conditional reinstatement. When WADA’s Executive Committee (EC) voted in September to bring RUSADA back into its fold as complaint, it set forth specific unfulfilled conditions for RUSADA to meet if the agency were to remain in good standing. The most...
About a week before the upcoming 2018/19 World Cup Season kicks off, the International Biathlon Union (IBU) announced in a press release on Thursday, November 22nd, that it has provisionally suspended a group of nine female and male athletes representing Kazakhstan from all IBU-sanctioned events with immediate effect, due to alleged anti-doping rule violations. The list of names includes a former Junior World Champion as well as Universiade gold medalist and World Cup podium finisher,...
On September 20th, this year, the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) Executive Committee made the decision reinstate the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA). WADA’s 12 person Executive Committee had met in Seychelles to vote on a recommendation from the Compliance Review Committee (CRC) that RUSADA’s suspension be lifted. Nine Executive Committee members voted in favor of the CRC’s recommendation, two voted against, and one abstained. Days before WADA decided to reinstate RUSADA, former Canadian cross-country skier, Beckie...
After the announcement that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Executive Committee, which WADA refers to in short at the ExCo, voted 9-2 in favor of reinstating the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) on Thursday, it released a statement describing what it considers a conditional reinstatement. As mentioned in an previous FasterSkier article, Russia has not fulfilled two outstanding provisions laid out in WADA’s “roadmap” for reinstatement. In its most recent public statement on the matter, also published on...
A full Olympic quad after Sochi, nothing remains irrefutably clean. Off the radar then on again, the Sochi doping scandal has sent recent tremors through the sports world. In a quick summary, after the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, the host nation was handed sanctions for the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics that affected some of its athletes. A total ban from Rio was not enacted despite the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) recommending the contrary. Russian athletes...
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has posted the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned that ban for Legkov and seven other cross-country skiers. At the time, they did not release many details about how they had come to their decisions. Adding to the confusion was the fact that CAS had upheld the disqualifications for some other athletes, including three biathletes. On Monday, CAS released the details behind its decision in Legkov’s case. In...
Note: This article has been updated with information about bribes as reported by Le Monde on Wednesday. Austrian police raided the headquarters of the International Biathlon Union (IBU) in Salzburg on Tuesday night and into Wednesday. released a statement on Wednesday, revealing that the search was part of an investigation into President Anders Besseberg and Secretary General Nicole Resch. Resch has taken an immediate leave of absence, and Executive Director Martin Kuchenmeister has taken over as...
Editor’s Note: The following thoroughly cited opinion piece, prompted by the 2017 ‘Icarus’ documentary, was written by Maks Zechel, a 20-year-old Canadian cross-country skier who spent the 2017/2018 race season training abroad with Team Asker in Norway. Zechel is a regular contributor at FasterSkier, with his ongoing series: “Closing the Gap”. *** February 23, 2014 Sochi: a home Olympics and the opportunity of a lifetime. Russia, despite being one of the strongest skiing nations in the...
In December, Biathlon Canada announced that after the men’s relay at the Olympics on Friday. “Our President, Anders Besseberg… at every turn when he has the chance to defend clean sport, he has turned the other way. And it’s not fair to clean athletes. The latest decision by the IBU was to send the World Cup tour to Tyumen, Russia, for our World Cup final. Team USA is boycotting. The Czech team is boycotting. Canada...
FasterSkier would like to thank Fischer Sport USA, Concept2, cleared 28 Russian athletes of doping charges. Many people seemed shocked by this development. The athletes had been disqualified from the 2014 Games by an International Olympic Committee (IOC) Commission. This was after more than 18 months of buildup in which the world learnt of systematic manipulation of the anti-doping process by the Russian state security apparatus at those Olympics. I was both shocked, and not shocked. When all...
A team of international journalists from Sweden, Switzerland, Britain, and Germany – led by Hajo Seppelt at Germany’s ARD broadcaster – has reported that hundreds of international skiers have had abnormal blood profiles at some point during their careers. In autumn of 2017, a whistleblower shared a database of 10,000 blood test values collected by FIS between 2001 and 2010 with Seppelt, the German documentarian who has brought to mainstream attention serious doping scandals in...
((Update: In accordance with the CAS decision outlined below, thewrote in a press release. “With respect to these 28 athletes, the appeals are upheld, the sanctions annulled and their individual results achieved in Sochi 2014 are reinstated.” The athletes whose results will be reinstated are: 50 k gold medalist and relay silver medalist Alexander Legkov 50 k silver medalist, team sprint and relay silver medalist Maxim Vylegzhanin, also fourth in the 30 k skiathlon relay...
Earlier this week it was announced that cross-country skier Sergey Ustiugov and biathlete Anton Shipulin were among the Russian athletes excluded from the 2018 Olympic Games coming up in PyeongChang, South Korea, next month. The question arose: just who would be representing Russia? The list of the 169 athletes on the “Olympic Athletes of Russia” team (which is not supposed to be confused with the Russian Olympic Team, which has been banned) has now been...
Three notable Russian Winter Olympians, Sergey Ustiugov, Anton Shipulin and Viktor Ahn are the most recent to be banned from the upcoming 2018 Olympics, which start in just over two weeks in PyeongChang, South Korea, for their alleged involvement in systematic doping at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) confirmed the decisions on Tuesday, Inside the Games reported. Ahn, 32, a South Korean-born Russian speedskater (who joined the Russian...
On Friday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) posted the reasoned decision from its Disciplinary Commission, in which Russian biathlete Olga Zaitseva was disqualified from the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Zaitseva’s disqualification had been announced previously, but this is the first full-length decision presenting the evidence for the disqualification of any biathlete. Olga Vilukhina and Yana Romanova have also been suspended, but the Oswald Commission’s full decisions for their cases have not yet been released....
On Dec. 10, the International Biathlon Union (IBU) Russia’s participation at the 2018 Winter Games. Despite the RBU’s less-than-full IBU member status, Russia is still scheduled to host the final IBU World Cup races of the season from March 20-25 in Tyumen and the IBU Cup 7 & 8 in Uvat and Khanty-Mansiysk. In an open letter sent to IBU President Anders Besseberg and IBU Secretary General Nicole Resch dated Dec. 8, 2017, Biathlon Canada’s President...
Yesterday, 2014 FIS Anti-Doping Rules, which went into effect on January 1, 2014 (before the Olympics started that February), state that the federation can take action against national ski teams, such as barring athletes from competition or assessing fines, if there is evidence of extensive doping within the team. Article 12.3.1 of the rules state that such action may be taken when “Four or more violations of these Anti-Doping Rules… are committed by Athletes or...