{"id":20889,"date":"2016-05-13T08:02:36","date_gmt":"2016-05-13T15:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/russia-kenya-track-teams-may-miss-rio\/"},"modified":"2016-05-13T08:02:36","modified_gmt":"2016-05-13T15:02:36","slug":"russia-kenya-track-teams-may-miss-rio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/russia-kenya-track-teams-may-miss-rio\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia, Kenya track teams may miss Rio"},"content":{"rendered":"

MONTREAL<\/strong> \u2014 The powerhouse track teams from Russia and Kenya are in serious jeopardy of missing this summer\u2019s Olympics after the World Anti-Doping Agency delivered stinging rebukes Thursday to attempts to clean up drug-addled programs in both countries.<\/p>\n

The WADA foundation board suspended Kenya\u2019s anti-doping agency after determining a new law passed to combat doping there fell short. Officials also released new numbers out of Russia showing that testing by independent authorities has decreased by more than two-thirds in the past year.<\/p>\n

\u201cDisappointing and disturbing information,\u201d said Beckie Scott, the Canadian gold-medal cross country skier who chairs WADA\u2019s athlete committee.<\/p>\n

The countries combined for 27 medals in track and field at the London Olympics. Kenya tied Jamaica for the most gold medals, with seven, at last year\u2019s world championships. The final call on whether either country\u2019s track team will be eligible for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics is left to the sport\u2019s governing body, the IAAF, which is set to decide about Russia next month.<\/p>\n

There were calls at the meeting, most notably from Scott, for WADA to provide more rock-solid assurances that the countries would not participate in Rio.<\/p>\n

WADA president Craig Reedie answered by reiterating a point he\u2019s made all along: WADA doesn\u2019t have final say.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know the situation as well as I do. Efforts are being made. We have to hope they\u2019ll be successful,\u201d Reedie said.<\/p>\n

The problems in Kenya run well outside the country\u2019s borders. Since the London Games, 40 Kenyans have been banned , all but five of them caught outside their own borders. The Associated Press reported that because of difficulty processing tests, some athletes are given advance notice of their tests, which makes it easier to escape detection.<\/p>\n

A law passed last month in Kenya sought to resolve the issues and legislators thought it had WADA\u2019s blessing. Not so. The head of WADA\u2019s compliance review board, Rene Bouchard, said amendments made to the original bill rendered the law unsatisfactory. He urged the full board to reject Kenya\u2019s agency and nobody in the room objected.<\/p>\n

Reaction in Kenya ranged from outraged to confused.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, for sure I don\u2019t understand,\u201d said Julius Yego, the world champion in javelin. \u201cWe don\u2019t know the way forward. Should we continue training or do we stop?\u201d<\/p>\n

Kenyan marathoner Wesley Korir, who serves in the country\u2019s parliament, said, \u201cWADA are killing the sport. Are we making the laws for WADA or for Kenyans? We need to find the communication between the ministry and WADA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s situation is even more dire.<\/p>\n

This week has been filled with nonstop revelations, none of them reflecting well on the country that hosted the 2014 Sochi Olympics, which now look every bit as tainted as the track team.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, there were whistleblower Vitaly Stepanov\u2019s details about four gold medalists from the Sochi Games who used steroids.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, as the WADA meeting was in progress, the New York Times went live with a blow-by-blow breakdown of how Russians switched out urine samples and performed other deceitful acts to ensure 15 drug-using medal winners and many others wouldn\u2019t test positive.<\/p>\n

And WADA released its own figures about drug testing in Russia, none of which reflected well on the so-called reforms taking place since its anti-doping agency was suspended last November.<\/p>\n

Among the stats:<\/p>\n

Only 10 doping-control agents are available to conduct tests throughout the entire country, and private contractors are reluctant to sign deals with Britain\u2019s anti-doping agency, which is in charge of the reforms in Russia, because the country\u2019s government doesn\u2019t pay on time.<\/p>\n

Agents are often harassed when trying to enter \u201cclosed\u201d cities in Russia with increased military presence, told if they show up again, they\u2019ll have their visas revoked.<\/p>\n

Of the 247 tests overseen by UK Anti-Doping, there have been 99 failures due to the inability to locate an athlete. There have also been 47 failed tests, though all but one of those has involved meldonium, the drug placed on the banned list at the start of this year.<\/p>\n

From Nov. 18 through May 5, there had been a total of 2,244 tests conducted on Russian athletes, compared to 6,890 over the same period a year earlier, when the Russian agency was still controlling the tests.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to totally discount the quality of the testing that is occurring now,\u201d said Joseph de Pencier, the CEO of the Institute of National Anti-Doping Organizations. \u201cBut clearly there\u2019s a problem with those numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout the meeting, there were calls for increased funding for WADA and for a beefed-up investigative arm that would allow the agency to pursue evidence of cheating instead of waiting for the media and others to uncover it.<\/p>\n

All in the works, Reedie promised.<\/p>\n

But the Olympics are less than three months away, and Scott may have best framed the bottom-line concern.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe anti-doping movement requires athletes to believe it\u2019s working,\u201d she said. \u201cIf we don\u2019t lead investigations, and not just follow up on TV programs \u2014 if we don\u2019t sanction (athletes and countries), then we lose belief not only in the system, but in the idea that winning clean is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MONTREAL \u2014 The powerhouse track teams from Russia and Kenya are in serious jeopardy of missing this summer\u2019s Olympics after the World Anti-Doping Agency delivered stinging rebukes Thursday to attempts to clean up drug-addled programs in both countries. The WADA foundation board suspended Kenya\u2019s anti-doping agency after determining a new law passed to combat doping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-20889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20889"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}