1 What do Richard McLaren’s devastating reports mean for Russia’s chances of being stripped of football’s 2018 World Cup?
Very little. Barring an unforeseen act of God, the 2018 World Cup is staying put. True, there are growing calls for Russia to be excluded from international competitions – with Richard Ask, the head of Denmark’s anti-doping agency, specifically referencing taking it away. Yet within football’s corridors of power nothing has changed: Fifa simply has no appetite to move the competition from Russia.
It is worth remembering that even after the first McLaren report in July – just when cries for all Russian athletes to miss the Olympics in Rio were at their loudest – football’s world governing body issued a statement that could have been dictated by a senior politburo member during the grimmest days of communism. “Fifa,” it said, “is confident that the local organising committee and the Russian government are going to deliver an outstanding event for football fans two years from now.”
The second part of McLaren’s report added greater texture and depth, but, fundamentally, its overriding theme – that the Russian state deliberately doped its athletes and corrupted international sport – was unchanged. Why would Fifa change tack now?
2 What about Russia’s chances of missing the 2018 Winter Olympics?
Slim, but there is a greater chance of this happening than Russia losing the World Cup – especially as a number of prominent voices are questioning whether the country’s doping culture can really change in time for PyeongChang in little over a year’s time.
Those voices include the chair of UK Sport, Rod Carr, who said: “It would take a lot to persuade me that they could be totally rehabilitated in time for PyeongChang and have a new culture. When I hear senior people in the Russian sporting and political establishment deny a lot of stuff, every time that happens, I’m thinking it’s going to take longer.”
Travis Tygart, the head of the US Anti-Doping Agency, has gone further, calling for the Russian Olympic Committee to be suspended. “The IOC has to act – and clean athletes won’t be satisfied until the World Anti-Doping Agency is empowered to be a truly independent global regulator and the Russian Olympic Committee is suspended until deemed code‑compliant.”
However, the International Olympic Committee is still focusing more on misbehaviour from individual athletes than the Russian state and, crucially, Thomas Bach, a friend of Vladimir Putin, has shown no desire for a full ban.
Unsurprisingly, the vice-president of the Russian Olympic Committee, Stanislav Pozdnyakov, says he is looking positively at the prospect of the country being allowed to compete at the 2018 Winter Olympics, telling Russian athletes the report contains nothing new and that Russian athletes “should train calmly for PyeongChang together with their coaches”.
3 What of Vitaly Mutko and his place on the Fifa council?
Nothing will change in the short term, but Uefa has confirmed that Mutko has begun the process of a Fifa integrity check before his bid for re-election in April. Those checking into Mutko’s past might want to have a word with McLaren, given his central thrust is that the Russian ministry of sport oversaw a state-backed doping program while Mutko was sports minister.
There also appears to be evidence that Mutko was involved in deciding whether footballers who tested positive should be saved from having a doping ban. In his first report in July, McLaren wrote: “Email evidence available to IP shows that SAVE decision for football players was final decision of ‘VL’” – meaning Vitaly Leontiyevich Mutko. While Mutko’s deputy, Yuri Nagornykh, was sacked in July, Mutko was promoted to deputy prime minister and retained his Fifa positions and presidency of the Russian football federation.
Asked on Friday if Uefa could launch its own investigation of Mutko, it deferred to Fifa’s continuing vetting process. “We have written to Fifa with the five potential candidates and the procedure is Fifa has to go through this eligibility check,” Uefa’s legal director, Alasdair Bell, said. Bell acknowledged that the McLaren report “appears to contain some serious allegations” though noted that they are being contested.
4 What does this mean for the IOC?
On the surface, the IOC strongly supported the second McLaren report, saying: “The detailed findings show that there was a fundamental attack on the integrity of the Olympic Games and on sport in general.”
That is a stronger line than it took for his first report in July and it is reassuring that it has also promised that it will retest all Russian samples from London 2012 and the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014. However, there is still no sign that it will look to ban Russia from future Olympics.
That said, the IOC can point to McLaren conceding that he was unable to uncover a link between the state‑sponsored doping and the Russian Olympic Committee, saying: “There is no direct evidence that members of the ROC were involved in this conspiracy” – which is one reason why it rejected the World Anti-Doping Agency’s call for a blanket ban from the Rio Olympics.
5 What does this mean for Wada?
McLaren’s work shows that Wada can mount rigorous and successful investigations into countries – but it remains an organisation under pressure on several fronts.
Some in the IOC, which provides Wada with half its funding, want to weaken the organisation for speaking out about Russian doping in the summer. As the Spanish Olympic Committee president, Alejandro Blanco, bluntly put it last month: “What is the objective of Wada? It must not be to tell sports institutions what they should be doing, like telling the IOC to sanction all Russian athletes.”
On the other side is a group of national anti‑doping organisations who want Wada to be a stronger and more independent global regulator with more powers to investigate and ensure the prosecution of anti-doping violations regardless of sport and country.
Wada has other problems, including a small budget and a lack of sanctioning powers. At present it can decide a country is defying the Wade code, but it can only recommend others to take action. Some also remain unconvinced about the effectiveness of the Wada president, Sir Craig Reedie, who knew about state-sponsored doping in Russia for years but did little to act until the German reporter Hajo Seppelt exposed it in December 2014. That said, Reedie was brave enough to defy the IOC in the summer by calling for Russia’s athletes to be banned from Rio.
Wada will rightly chalk McLaren’s investigation down as a win for itself and anti-doping. However, the unresolved battle for its soul, between the IOC, governments and other anti‑doping bodies, remains as fierce as ever.