Looks like this last one was a DNA swab from inside the cheeks taken at the Russian OT.
Those results didn:t compare with the earlier ones taken last season in april-may and august-september on the seven athletes.
Valentina Vasilyevichs learned of the IAAF suspicions in june. The IAAF had made queries about the seven athletes in question last season, but didn:t act on their suspicions until june - nine months after the second series of tests were performed. This is one area of concern for the Russian execs, as they wondered what took so long for the IAAF to analyse. Vasilyevichs turned to the IAAF on the eve of the Russian Championships and asked what should be done now that the IAAF had alerted the Russian federation. Nothing was done at that moment, and Vasilyevichs states he wanted to get more information from the IAAF for the case, and nothing was done. He wanted to know if the seven athletes should (or not) be permitted to compete. The Russians did remove one athlete from competition due to a positive "A"-test, though no elaboration is provided as to which one.
The IAAF responded to Vasilyevich that there were no foundations for either them or the Russian federation to remove any of the athletes at that moment - nine months after the second sample was collected. Each of the athletes in question appeared in Kazan and five of them were selected into the Olympics.
The following day, after the end of the Russia Olympic Trials (21-july), smear tests from inside of each of the seven athletes cheeks were volontarily taken without coercion - a fact Vasilyevich stated was an evidence of the atheltes innocence (why volonteer for something which would ultimately bust them?).
The testers reported to Vasilyevich that the tests demonstrated that the true DNA of each of the seven athletes did not correspond to the tests from 2007-april and 2007-may.
Vasilyevich questions why a test on DNA takes so long to complete ("six to eight months?") He shed a bit of humour on the issue and asks, "Has the idea to compare tests become alien to someone in IAAF relatively recently?"
Among other things Vasilyevich points out and discusses, he was most interested in why the IAAF removed the seven athletes instead of disqualifying them all-together. He states the implication of a disqualification is a direct link to CAS, something they are not afforded with a removal. The removal is a sign of suspicision; the disqualification would have been an evidence of guilt.
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SOBOLEVA OUT OF BEIJING
I’m pretty sure that “Vasilyevich” is a patronymic, not a last name – i.e. Valentin Vasilyevich (son of Vasily) Balakhnichev.
I’m at work now and don’t have time to do a real translation – and gh wouldn’t let me post it here anyway, due to copyright issues. But here’s the original Russian interview: http://www.allsport.ru/index.php?id=16645 And here are links to a pair of automatic translations. If you view them side-by-side, you can get a pretty good idea about what was really said. Babel Fish translation: here Google translation: here
One quick excerpt though:
So evidently this is a "trial balloon" in some sense.
I'm not sure what he means by this. IAAF could only do a DNA comparison with stored samples once they had the athletes actual DNA sample, i.e. the cheek swabs collected at their OT's. So these tests did not take 6-8 months to complete.
Would they have any grounds to refuse a cheek swab ? Besides which, I am not sure athletes would immediately understand the exact implications of the test. If you have to give blood and urine, even if you were cheating would you jump straight to the conclusion that it would be detectable from a swab. There is reference to one athlete being pulled from competition for a positive A sample. Can I ask again whether Yegorova actually ran in Kazan or could she be the +ve which would also make sense as the early reports did not mention her. I am intrigued to find out what was found in the athlete who has tested +ve.
Yegorova won her heat of the 1500m, but didn't run the final.
It might not even need that. A local who is a high-up USA Triathlon official described to me being rather starstruck by athletes she was given charge of to follow through to doping control in Kona a few years ago. She sounded like she would have done anything for them. I don't think it's a bad day for track any more than it was a bad day for Congress on Tuesday when Ted Stevens got hit with indictments. Both groups are susceptible to corruption and every so often the garbage gets taken out. Same way this time too: not the crime but the hiding. By the way, I was convinced in February that Soboleva was on something, because running 1:56.49i and 3:58.05i on back-to-back days was too good to be true, like an unending housing market boom. When I saw the Kazan results I literally said out loud "whatever the Russians are on, it's very good".
"This is pure politics," Sergei Vasilyev, the coach of the suspended athletes, said by telephone. "If these athletes, who are the main contenders for gold medals, are forced out of the games, the new favorites will automatically be the Chinese." Really, now?? Is he spinning this one right out of control?
The reactions are written in pure Soviet style: Deny everything and accuse the critics as enemies of the state.
I think the fact that a) Russia has obviously an organized doping system for their women and b) the officials are equally obviously not interested in ending that, should result in banning Russia from the next WC until they are willing to play according to rules. Their female throws are essentially all rotten (SP gold in Athens, three hammer throwers including Lysenko, two discus throwers) and their pool of middle distance runners is being depleted now, too.
I agree with the Russians. This smacks of politics given the timing. The Russians ought to make life difficult for the IAAF.
You're an engineer, yes? You should be able to pick out the significance of this: 
Well don't tell my boss, but most of the things I've had to deal with today have been simple maintenance issues, so I "found the time" to do a full translation after all. 
I know that gh doesn't want me posting full translations of copyrighted material here, but the senior editors at AllSport.ru know about my translations, since I send them copies via email, and they usually - but not always - post them to the "AllSport in English" section of their website. I'll be sending this one off to Andrey & Yevgeny shortly (I've always corresponded with them entirely in Russian, and it takes me much longer to compose original material in Russian than to translate someone elses writing from Russian to English), but I'm going to provide a link to a "domestic" copy here, since it's the middle of the night now in Moscow, and sometimes it takes a few days for them to act when I send them something. If gh really objects, he can always excise the link, and if Becca objects, she can pull it from her site too. But until one of them does, you can access it here: http://www.polevaultpower.com/forum/vie ... 32&t=15791
If Balco didn't get us kicked out, should this do it for them?
What would be the political motivation for something like this? Why risk annoying the no. 2 athletics nation and hosts of the 2013 WCs? It's not in the interests of the IAAF to offend them. Realpolitik decrees they'd have to be pretty sure of their facts/pissed off before they acted on something like this.
If this becomes an even bigger stink expect reprisals.
I wasn't thinking of a team getting kicked out --- more along the lines of an entire team (Nation) walking, or threatening to. Perhaps even more so if testing protocols have just now caught up to potential offenders.
I'm a ME, not an EE. But, give me a few minutes...I'll see if I can decipher it based on my early EE training 
Stopwatch???
I've seen the hatred on this board for East Europeans, particularly coming from posters in 2 countries (mine not included). Don't think that hatred for the US seen in many quarters isn't also directed at the East Europeans, Russia in particular. This is a georacialpolitical world we live in, and it permeats everything. Anyone who thinks differently has their head in the sand. Last edited by Kurt Francis on Thu Jul 31, 2008 5:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Ha! Then on the other hand, I wouldn't be too surprised if some Chinese showed rather exceptional, sudden improvement at the Games. Having talked with a few guys here and there who have been on the circuit, they were of the opinion that politics is involved in some cases of enforcement and/or non-enforcement, with certain countries let off the hook and others generally having to take a body shot when caught. They felt that, yikes, US sprinters "might' be catching breaks here and there, and a percentage of E. Africans also, along with runners from smaller countries being let slide rather than the larger ones (mainly European) that you would expect to have influence and thus be able to skate when it comes to testing. If these guys were right, then it isn't only about money. I'm not behind the scenes, so who knows? Maybe Scully and Mulder should look into it.
I wasn't at all implying that I think the Russian team should be banned. I was just asking the question of where the tipping point for such an action against any country would be.
If we assume a political motivation, it need not be on the
international level. It could well be more of an IAAF internal thing. It is not uncommon for organisations (including governments, companies, and sport organisations) or the people on top of the organisations to handle matters so as to get ``their way'' done, putting fairness and similar concepts aside. In this case, it is conceivable that a decision was made to have the, presumably, guilty russians excluded from the OG, no matter what. (Yes, similar childish sounding decisions are not uncommon.) According to one article, a protest by the russians has to be treated within two months; thus, the timing was chosen so this could be done after the games---without violating the rules. (Many other explanations and combinations are possible.) Consider similarly the discussions around this years FOT, the scandals and allegations around the volley ball equivalent of the IAAF (I do not rembember its name), or the absurd behaviour of the swedish wrestling federation concerning Ida-Theres Karlsson. Now, I am _not_ saying that there is anything similar going on. I am just pointing to the importance of _internal_ politics, as a potentially greater source of ``odd behaviour'' than global politics.
I tend to agree with you on this one, Imaginative. This could very well be a case of political-correctness within the upper echelon of the IAAF biased against the Russians; i.e., the desire to prevent them from spoiling the chances of the upstart African women. It stinks to high heaven in my book.
We know all problems cycling is facing, in weightlifting all athletes qualified from Bulgaria to OG were banned and now this with several russian athletes.
I mentioned doping is a WorldWide problem and unfortunately I start to believe that any outstanding performance from anyone has an high probability of being "dirty".
I may be wrong, but I don't believe the Bulgairan team were banned per se....11 or 12 athletes failed doping tests and as a result, the Bulgarian federation decided to keep the entire team out of the olympics?! The Bulgarian fed seemed disgusted and were apologetic, a similar stance would be nice from the Russians. Ultimately, 7 (that we know of) athletes tampered with their tests and their automatic response involves blame as opposed to shame? Similarly, the Greeks, the fathers of the Olympic games think it''s fine to send Thanou (who only had the B standard, thus there was no real pressure) despite the fact that she is a national, and world wide disgrace? You'd think, somewhere, somebody from these nations would understand damage control and try to protect their other athletes by condeming the cheats...otherwise they ALL get tarnished with the same brush.
This is of course a very interesting scenario and shows that some of the initiatives that were discussed at the 2006 IAAF Anti Doping Congress held in Lausanne, are coming to fruition.
It was said at the time in Lausanne, that the IAAF intended to use much more intelligence based approach to its Anti Doping strategy in order to try to protect clean athletes. What this meant among other things, was that they were targetting "known" or "suspected" trouble spots, countries and athletes, with more out of competition controls and perhaps with more frequency. As an example, following the issues with some of the Hungarian Throwers in Athens, they were carrying out more OOC tests on Hungarian throwers, and some countries suspected of EPO use or Blood Doping also came under heavy scrutiny ( and it could be said that some traditional strong Middle Distance countries have not been so strong in the last 18 months...). The were also encouraging athletes and coaches with suspicions to come forward, and they would look at these concerns and perhaps carry out more OOC tests in these areas. ALso counties without a recognised OOC Testing programme were also focussed on, as can be seen in the overview of the 3000+ tests thatthe IAAF carried out in 2007, as countries such as Jamaica and even Russia, had their major athletes tested more frequently than the athletes from say USA and UK, where a more extensive OOC testing programme is in effect. The other major new area of investigation that they discussed at this conference was the use of information gathered from previous tests as an indication of doping infringements, rather than the result form just one sample. For example, while all tests conducted at an accredited lab are carried out anonymously, they wanted to introduce a system where previous test results from the same athlete could be used to look for anomilies. If a test for a particular athlete showed a Testosterone/Epitestosterone ratio of greater than 4:1 (indication of positive test), or perhaps only 2:1, but previous tests had never been greater than 1:1, then this was in itself evidence of doping, and so would result in a positive test. Similarly, they may conduct a carbon isotope assay on a sample that showed less than 4:1 ratio, but indicated the presence of exogenous testosterone, and therefore result in a positive test. In the past, this secondary testing was very rarely used, but is now being used as a matter of course, and therfore can show eveidence of doping even though the Test:Epi ratio did not give a positive indication. DNA can be obtained from a number of sources, and can be used to ensure that a particular sample actually came from the person that is was meant to have come from. Going back to the Katrin Krabbe tests, the training partners were not banned for testing positive sample, but rather for manipulation of the testing procedure, when it was discovered that the three (I believe) athletes urine samples that were taken in South Africa, were shown to come from one and the same person, and so could not have come from (at least two) of the athletes in question. They had provided clean samples that had come from someone that was not using drugs, and they had presumably catheterised themselves and introduced that clean urine into their own bladders, or used a vessel to hold the clean urine, so that they would give the impression of providing a sample to the doping officers, when in fact it was not their own urine. This is exactly why UNANNOUNCED OUT OF COMPETITION TESTING is so important to catch cheaters.... I would suggest that in this case, the IAAF had some questions about the authenticity in some of the samples obtained last year (2007) on a number of athletes, and started to compare samples from different dates from the same athletes, and perhaps to compare DNA in each sample to ensure that they were coming from the same person. If there were any anomalies, then these would have to be investigated further and perhaps more tests were compared for these same athletes. If the DNA in two or more tests from (supposedly) the same person was shown to be different, then there were certainly questions to be answered, and I would suggest that this was when the Rissian Federation was informed in June. A this is a new anti doping practice, then the testing merthodology would have to be proved, double checked and validated by independent scientists before the IAAF could move forward from a legal perspective and try to use this as a demonstration of Doping. Remember that Tim Montgomery never actually failed a test, but was banned upon the testimony of others, that proved to a satisfactory degee to CAS that a Doping Infraction had taken place, and Montgomery banned. With the science proven and the IAAF / WADA ./ CAS Lawyers happy that it would stand up in court, then the next natural step was to obtain another sample, and certain DNA sample from the Athletes in question, andthe Russian Championships would be the ideal location as they should all be there, so Gabrielle Dolle was dispatched to get the definitive DNA samples. Once these were checked against the questionable tests from 2007, and discrepancies would give clear indication of manipulation of the Anti Doping procedures, and allow for the athletes in question to be suspended imediately. I think that the timing is good...the Russian Champs were late, just before the cut-off date for Olympic Entries, and after the IOC Testing protocol comes into effect. I am sure that the Russians would have entered a fourth (reserve) athlete where available, so these reserves could appear in Beijing, but inthe 800/1500m this may be more of a problem as a number of athletes are effected, and only one reserve per event would be entered. I am glad that some of these initiatives seem to be working now. Sorry for the long post... ShaunP
But unless Balakhnichev is flat-out lying, Gabrielle Dolle didn't go to the Russian championships in Kazan to collect the DNA samples. He went to Moscow, about 400 miles (644 km) away from Kazan. I suspect that he could've found six out of seven in Moscow almost anytime. I kind of doubt that these gals are innocent victims, but the timing on this is clearly intended to keep 'em out of Beijing without a hearing of any sort. So while we're gonna have to wait and see if the science will really stand up in court, the punishment has already been imposed. And I can't say that I'm very comfortable with the judge-jury-executioner combination involved here.
Power of media. Things are not seen the same by all people. We all saw Thanou and Kederis as the bad guys. That was the way the world media portrayed, besides it made a great story. Many Greeks have had drummed into them and read a hundred times that the athletes never failed a test, that t was all a misunderstanding etc. Much the same way other countries may judge the role of Linford Christie or the return to the team of Christine Ohourugu and Mark Richardson, they may never have had full information. People support Thanou in Greece and it would be a harsh reality for the public if she were dumped by the federation. Besides I wouldn't treat Thanou any harsher than Blonska, Cherry etc, they all brought out sport into disrepute.
Whatever surreptitious affairs may be concealed in this case, all I can say at this point is thank God for Pamela Jelimo, Tirunesh Dibaba and Meserat Defar. They ought to be able to deal with any Chi-bots that pop up out of holes in the track. Hey, there's a video game concept to market in Africa..... 
http://blog.templates.com/3d-robots-review/
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