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Grigory Rodchenkov was head of Russia’s ‘anti-doping’ centre but, in 2015, he fled to the US... The super-lab’s name is a misnomer. As Rodchenkov recounts in a gripping memoir, The Rodchenkov Affair, he ran Russia’s doping programme. He developed a novel drugs cocktail to help his country win. It featured three nearly undetectable anabolic steroids. Athletes swished it around the mouth, mixed with Chivas Royal or vermouth. Russia’s state-sponsored doping operation was a highly sophisticated affair, refined over many years. And a successful one. Moscow cheated its way to medals in successive international competitions. They included the 2012 London Olympics,...

Russia may need an Olympic "timeout" as doping issues resurface after figure skating prodigy Kamila Valieva tested positive for a banned substance at the Beijing Winter Games, senior International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Dick Pound from Canada said. Russian athletes at the Beijing Games are already not competing under their flag while carrying the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) on their uniforms, and their anthem is not being played at any ceremonies, following sanctions imposed for the widespread doping across many sports exposed after the Sochi Games. The 15-year-old Valieva became an early darling of the Beijing Games when she became...

BEIJING, Feb 11 (Reuters) - The drug scandal engulfing 15-year-old Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva is inhumane and the adults responsible should be banned forever, skating legend Katarina Witt said. "What they knowingly did to her, if true, cannot be surpassed in inhumanity and makes my athlete's heart cry infinitely," said Witt, an Olympic champion in 1984 and 1988. Valieva on Monday won Olympic gold with her Russian team mates, but it was revealed on Friday that she had earlier failed a drug test. The 15-year-old's gold medal and Games future now hangs in the balance as the International Olympic...

Rafael Arutyunyan has guided figure skaters from around the world, under numerous sports systems to the top of their sport...including Alexander Abt, Michelle Kwan, Mao Asada, Jeffrey Buttle, Sasha Cohen, Ashley Wagner, Adam Rippon and Nathan Chen. A graduate of the Armenian State Institute of Physical Culture, Arutyunyan has extensive coaching experience in Armenia, Russia and the United States. RA: So, you know, what I think has happened is that these two countries [Russia and the United States] have really different mentalities about everything. After fifteen or sixteen years of living in the U.S., I start to realize it more...

Russia was the IOC’s kind of country. It put chauvinism before money, and money before sport. It spent like mad and doped like mad. When in 2014 the desperate Stepanovs broke cover and gave their ignored material to the media, the balloon went up. The IOC even admitted to being embarrassed, though it revealed its true opinion of whistleblowers when it allowed other Russian athletes to compete at Rio 2016, but banned Yuliya Stepanova. That is what international sport does to those who do not play by its rules. Supranational bodies will go on corrupting sport and enjoying themselves by...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert said Sunday that his barn has been told Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit failed a postrace drug test, the latest doping scandal for horse racing and arguably the sport’s premier trainer. Flanked by his attorney Craig Robertson in a morning news conference at Churchill Downs on Sunday, Baffert said Medina Spirit was found to have 21 picograms of the steroid betamethasone, double the legal threshold in Kentucky racing, in a postrace sample.

US Olympic boxer Virginia Fuchs, who beat doping allegations because the banned substances were transmitted to her during sex, has spoken out in a video interview, saying she had “no idea” something like that could happen. “When I was first notified back in March when I had these prohibited substances in me, I was in complete shock and had no idea where they had come from, knowing I had never ingested anything,” Fuchs said in the video published by FOX 26 reporter Mark Berman on Twitter about the moment she found out she was positive for Letrozole and GW1516, which...

The first Kentucky Derby winner ever disqualified from the race is once again making headlines for the wrong reasons.Maximum Security trainer Jason Servis is one of 27 people indicted by the Southern District of New York in a wide-ranging horse racing doping scheme. Servis is alleged to have administered performance-enhancing drugs “to virtually all the racehorses under his control,” between 2018-20.MORE AT LINK 

Lausanne (AFP) - The World Anti-Doping Agency on Monday banned Russia for four years from major global sporting events including the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar over manipulated doping data, prompting an angry response from President Vladimir Putin. WADA's executive committee, meeting in Lausanne, handed Russia the "robust" four-year suspension after accusing Moscow of falsifying data from a doping testing laboratory that was handed over to investigators earlier this year. The toughest ever sanctions imposed on Russian state authorities will see government officials barred from attending any major events, while the country will lose the...

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has imposed a four-year ban on Russia from all global sport, including the 2020 Olympics and the 2022 World Cup finals. WADA's executive committee took the decision after concluding Moscow had tampered with laboratory data. The agency found Russia planted fake evidence and deleted files linked to positive doping tests that could have helped identify drug cheats.

It’s not often I’m happy to see a bureaucrat leave their job. That’s not entirely true, I would like to see every bureaucrat leave their job and would cheer wildly if they did. But I’m cheering one specific bureaucrat leaving his job because he was particularly dangerous at it – Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb. Why would I, and why should you, care that the head of the FDA has given his notice? Because, if you’re like me, or care about anyone in the future who might be, his resignation might just save lives. Like too many people,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supporters of a bill that would make international sports doping a crime argued Wednesday that the legislation would deter scandals like Russian state-sponsored drug use at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Yulia Stepanova, a Russian former track athlete who became a whistleblower about the drug program, said at a congressional hearing that ending doping in her country would have to “start from the top” — with Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. The bill was named for Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the Russian lab director who exposed the cheating in Sochi. Rodchenkov has said the doping stemmed from Putin’s command...

The social media post seemed harmless enough: swimmer Ryan Lochte sharing a photograph of himself hooked to an intravenous bag, writing “athletic recovery with some #ivdrip.” But when officials noticed the photo in May, they launched an investigation that has now resulted in Lochte being suspended just days before the national championships in Irvine. The 14-month sanction has nothing to do with the substance in the IV bag, which was permitted, but rather the amount Lochte received. Athletes, who often take infusions of vitamins and other dietary supplements, are allowed 100 milliliters every 12 hours. The 33-year-old Olympian exceeded that...

It started as one of Spain’s typical grand passing rondos, it grew over 90 minutes and then 120 into one of the biggest mountains of possession amassed since World Cup records began, and by the end it felt like this great generation of players had run out of fresh ideas. This was the remnants of the great world champions of 2010 passing the ball 1,114 times in a match but unable to score more goals than a Russia team who refused to be passed to death in the way that so many opponents have in the past. By the end...

A second Russian athlete has failed a doping test at the Pyeongchang Games, a day before the International Olympic Committee's executive board is to decide whether to reinstate the country for Sunday's closing ceremony. Russian Bobsled Federation president Alexander Zubkov told The Associated Press on Friday that a drug-test sample that pilot Nadezhda Sergeeva gave on Sunday was positive.

"I am very sorry to all the clean athletes we cheated," former Russian anti-doping laboratory director Grigory Rodchenkov said in correspondence to The Associated Press. Rodchenkov, who lives in hiding, denied claims by Russian President Vladimir Putin that his unmasking of the scandal was being controlled by U.S. agencies. "As usual, Putin is misinformed," Rodchenkov said. "I am speaking the truth. No one is influencing me." Rodchenkov also berated the Court of Arbitration for Sport for overturning lifetime Olympic bans on Russians, saying the ruling gave the impression to clean competitors that "we don't care about you." Asked whether he...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said barring dozens of Russians from the games was “part of this unfair competition, because the Americans apparently can no longer beat us in a fair fight. They believe that taking back and preserving uncontested leadership in global sports requires sidelining the competition.” The assertion came in an interview the minister gave to Rossia-1 news channel, aired on Sunday.

Lance Armstrong has thrown his support behind the Netflix documentary Icarus, which details the alleged Russian state doping system put in place at the Sochi Olympics. Armstrong has pledged to host a screening of the film on January 6 in New York City. Oscar nomination voting opens on January. (Update: it's been nominated.) Fogel told the Hollywood Reporter that he first learned Armstrong had watched the film when he saw Armstrong's tweet in December, and he was happy that Armstrong responded positively. "He was certainly punished in having his seven Tour titles stripped from him, and this is a subject...

The film-makers behind the documentary which exposed Russia’s state-sponsored doping programme have accused the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of doing “backroom deals” with Moscow ahead of next month’s winter Games in South Korea. The whistleblower who exposed the programme, Dr Grigory Rodchenkov, is currently in hiding in the US. Rodchenkov’s lawyer Jim Walden described his client – whose whereabouts are unknown – as “extremely brave” and “an incredible man”. Rodchenkov was grateful to WADA for recognising that “he was telling the truth the whole time”. But he was now “distressed” that the IOC was considering lifting the suspension of some...

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