Head of Russian Anti-Doping Agency confirms Russia’s state-level support of doping
Yuri Ganus, Director-General of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), when asked about the possibility of doping samples being substituted during the Olympics in Sochi, admitted that doping had been supported on the government level in Russia.
“These changes in the database, what are they? Support on a state level? Yes, it turns out. It was done by people endowed with serious government powers. The problems were on the highest level of the sporting leadership. That is, the highest level of sporting officials were actually involved in these processes,” championat.com quotes Ganus as saying.
“Was there a ‘hole in the wall’ in Sochi, through which the FSB supposedly switched the samples? I haven’t been able to ascertain these details. Do I believe it? You know, it’s not ‘I believe, I don’t believe’ here, I’m not playing ‘she loves me, she loves me not’ with a daisy, there is responsibility in any case. But it’s critically important to ascertain all the circumstances of these cases and figure it out, in order to put an end to it. Because it’s still too early to assess the consequences and the losses for our sport. But we haven’t hit the bottom yet. Let’s wait for the decisions that will be made,” said the head of RUSADA.
RUSADA’s status has been threatened after another doping scandal. Russia is suspected of manipulating data from the Moscow Laboratory. Previously Ganus said that roughly a thousand samples could have been falsified.
The World Anti-Doping Agency’s compliance review committee advised the organization’s executive committee to declare RUSADA non-compliant with the anti-doping code and to exclude Russia from the 2020 Olympics.