LISTEN TO DAVID HOWMAN TALK WITH RADIO SPORT BREAKFAST ABOVE Former World Anti-Doping Agency director-general David Howman has lambasted the poor principles involved in the decision to usher Russia back into the WADA programme. The World Anti-Doping Agency declared Russia's scandal-ridden drug-fighting operation back in business Thursday, a decision designed to bring a close to one of sports' most notorious doping scandals but one bitterly disputed by hundreds of athletes and described as "treachery" by the lawyer for the man who exposed the corruption. On a 9-2 vote, the executive committee took the advice of the agency's compliance review panel and declared RUSADA as having satisfied conditions of reinstatement that were gradually softened over the summer. In most tangible ways, the decision doesn't change much: RUSADA has been up and running for a while, bringing one of the world's largest testing programs back on line with the help of officials from Britain and elsewhere. And Russia's Olympic committee was brought back into the fold after the Pyeongchang Olympics, where athletes who could prove they were clean were able to compete as "Olympic Athletes from Russia." But RUSADA's reinstatement, after nearly a three-year suspension, now clears the country to again bid for major international events — although soccer's World Cup was held there this summer despite that restriction. Howman says they haven't satisfied critical conditions, and people are dreaming if they think Russia will cough up evidence in the next six months that leads to the sanctioning of athletes. WADA have granted the concession at an executive committee meeting in the Seychelles. Howman told Radio Sport Breakfast how the politics work. "What the Russians have been able to do is put pressure on through saying 'look, we will be able to hold international events if we were compliant, and the IOC is saying 'that's pretty important, because international federations want to hold their world championships at no costs." The IOC form half of the WADA board. Howman says he was once a cynical optimist about doping in sport, now he says he's a cynical pessimist. The move also clears a major hurdle for Russia's track team to be declared compliant by that sport's international governing body (IAAF) — one of the few to take a strong, consistent stand against the doping — though IAAF released a statement saying there were other milestones still unmet and its next update isn't due until December. Perhaps most importantly, hundreds of athletes and dozens of world anti-doping leaders see it as a stinging rebuke to the ideal of fair play. "WADA's decision to reinstate Russia represents the greatest treachery against clean athletes in Olympic history," said Jim Walden, the attorney for Grigory Rodchenkov, the former Moscow lab director who exposed much of the Russian scheme. WADA had been telegraphing the move since Sept. 14, when it released the recommendation of its compliance review committee. Olympic champion Beckie Scott resigned from that committee afterward. "I'm profoundly disappointed," Scott said to Canadian broadcaster CBC after the decision. "I feel this was an opportunity for WADA, and they have dealt a devastating blow to clean sport. I'm quite dismayed." Ben Hawes, chairman of the British Olympic Association's Athletes' Commission, said: "It is clear the process of the removal of these sanctions whilst key criteria has yet to be fulfilled has angered the athlete community." Even in Russia, where the news was welcomed, it came with a sense that there's still work to be done. "These questions will always follow us," said RUSADA CEO Yuri Ganus, whose appointment to the job was part of the housecleaning at the agency that WADA demanded. "These aren't the kind of skeletons which can lie unnoticed in the closet. These are the skeletons which will be banging on the closet door all the time." The two biggest roadblocks to RUSADA's reinstatement (and still pen...
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