So Smiley was right all along: the bloody Russians were the baddest of the bad. The Pound report on the epic scale of their state-sponsored doping and cheating in athletics was indeed seismic. It can’t have come as that much of a surprise, though. In a remarkable investigation in July 2013, Martha Kelner and Nick Harris of the Mail on Sunday blew the lid on the whole cesspool of Russian corruption.
This was the headline: Drugs, -bribery and the cover-up! -Russian athletes— including those who robbed Brits of medals — ‘ordered to dope by coaches’ and officials ‘demanded cash to mask positive tests’. Pretty much what we got this week from Dick Pound, the gunslinging sheriff brought in to clean up the sport. But what a pity that athletics’ governing body, the IAAF, hadn’t felt like doing anything a bit earlier.
Its main job has been to say: ‘Move along please, there’s no story here.’
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