This is part one of a multi-part series titled “Limiting Factors – A Genesis of Blood Doping”. It comes to FasterSkier from Sammy Izdatyev. Sammy Izdatyev is the pen name of a Finnish sports enthusiast and unaffiliated amateur historian, who has been interested in endurance sports since the turn of the millennium. He hopes that his pro bono – research can provide more information into the body of literature of earlier underresearched areas of...
As the Seefeld World Championships faded as of Sunday with the conclusion of the men’s 50-kilometer freestyle, here are some news gaps related to the recent arrest last week of five cross-country skiers. Here are the basics. Several cross-country athletes were arrested in Seefeld as part of a German and Austrian effort to curb doping in sport. Austrian athletes Dominik Baldauf and Maz Hauke, Kazakhstan’s Alexey Poltoranin, and Estonia’s Karel Tammjärv and Andreas Veerpalu were...
Overnight a video was leaked of Austria’s Max Hauke as he was arrested during a police raid conducted earlier this week. Hauke is seen in the video receiving a blood transfusion. The police officer who provided the video to the media is now under investigation by Austrian authorities. https://twitter.com/yohanroblin/status/1101426827036409856 On Wednesday, Hauke was one of five cross-country athletes arrested in Seefeld as part of a widespread anti-doping sting. Along with Hauke, Austrian teammate Dominik Baldauf, Estonians Karle...
At a news conference in Innsbruck, Austria today, the Federal Criminal Police Office (the equivalent of the FBI in Austria) clarified that several athletes had been arrested for doping. This remains a developing story. However, Tiroler Tageszeitung reports that Austrian cross-country skiers Dominik Baldauf and Maz Hauke were arrested for “blood doping”. Austrian police claimed a Kazakh and two Estonian athletes were also arrested. Baldauf and Hauke were paired in the men’s team sprint at the...
There is nothing black and white about the world of anti-doping. The fight continues against those who bend the rules, lack the core values of clean sport, and play hocus pocus with positive samples rendered negative. When the saga is penned about the anti-doping movement from 2014-January 2019, this much will be clear: strictly defined rules and conditions with hard timelines are mercurial. On Tuesday, the World Anti Doping Authority (WADA) announced Russia would receive...
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...