glassmoon said:
Biathlon:
Koakalova refused to shake hands with Andres Besseberg (president of IBU) during the small globe ceremony for sprint discipline. Reason would be his weak stand and lack of action in widespread doping scandal (among the russian athletes). He has been also criticized by Fourcade, Slesingr, Bailey and other athletes... He reportedly gave her the "wtf look" and she just replied: "I'm sorry (I can't)". According to her, he should have been fired/resigned long time ago as he is more representing his well being rather the athletes' interests.
What action was he supposed to take? 31 names were announced. 22 have been cleared.* 3 have been suspended (Romanova, Vilukhina, Glazyrina). 6 remain under investigation.
It's the same dogs shouting every time, Martin Fourcade, the US and the Czech teams. The Czechs have had a real upswing in attention to the sport in recent years and have really come to prominence, and certainly the marginalization of the Russians would benefit them (guarantor of an annual event in Nové Město, which for reasons of crowd size and atmosphere should be a given at this point anyway, they're the best placed venue to replace the profitable Russian rounds financially for that reason too, as well as that the Czechs are now well established as the 6th best team on the men's side, behind the big four and Austria), Fourcade's beef seems to be purely personal as he's managed to keep his relationships with some of the more established Russian athletes ok, and the US interest in it is purely political.
The biggest problem for me with the handling of the Russians here is, do the IBU have the authority to ban, suspend or remove people not from competition but from the structure of the SBR? Because that's what needs doing. There are 20 potentially innocent athletes whose names are being dragged through the mud for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and only one of the athletes presently suspended was an active athlete anyway (Glazyrina), so what real value does banning people who are already retired have.
Now, Koukalová's contention that Besseberg and the other high-ups in the sport are more concerned about their own position than cleaning up the sport? That may have some legs. Certainly the IBU is far from blameless in the corruption game (as anybody familiar with the name "Gottlieb Taschler" can attest - it's only this year and under heavy pressure from the national federations that Gottlieb was removed from his post as organizer of the Antholz round). And the profitability of Russia for the sport of biathlon, where it is the wintersport par excellence, naturally creates a conflict between morals and finance in cases like this. But Besseberg has always maintained, and I think it is absolutely right in this case, that they cannot suspend or ban athletes - even less entire nations - on the basis of a suspicion. Where there has been sufficient evidence, there have been bans (although I'm not sure why Lapshin is still out there, I have to say, given Glazyrina's out). There are 12 athletes who attended a camp for the Junior team in Sochi in January 2014, who will have been 18-20 at the time, and only appear in the McLaren report on the basis of one test, done on that date. 11 of them came back clean, the 12th had a sample with no result logged. That's all there is against them. Can you really justify banning a dozen athletes on that evidence? I don't think you can. Now, whether they're being rather lax in some of the investigations is a further question (again, to my untrained eye the case against Timofey Lapshin would seem rather cut and dried, but he's still racing, albeit for South Korea - that's another problem, also - ban Russia from competition and all you'll find is an even bigger influx of Russians getting passports for various neighbouring states and CIS countries in order to continue their careers - we've already seen Russian-born athletes competing for Kazakhstan, Korea, Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia and even Sweden the last few years. And that screws over the athletes from those countries who get fewer opportunities as a result.
*actually only 20, this was an error on my part. 22 athletes have been cleared because of either "absence of evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the athlete" or "the athlete has already been punished for the indiscretions covered in the report" - this latter heading applies to Starykh, who was removed from competition during the period covered, and also Loginov, whose offences are within the timeframe covered, but this was already discovered in November 2014 and so he has already served his suspension for the offences listed in the report. The other Russian banned at this time, Ekaterina Iourieva, does not appear in the report and it appears to be thought that at the time covered by the report she was doping independently to try to force back into the team rather than being part of a centralized program.