gh wrote: Next offender in this regard is gone. Instantly.
Next thing you know someone will sue you for obstructing a lively 'hood. They could always have dems elves declared legally insane.
|
|
SOBOLEVA OUT OF BEIJING
Soboleva says that this (news of having been accused of broken anti-doping rules) happened suddenly, and only in a few hours after she:s had an opportunity to digest everything, will she have find it within herself to comment on anything (with the Russian Federation first).
http://www.sports.ru/olympics2008/5355158.html Russia:s head trainer just stated on television that the athletes had all passed the same tests in 2005 and 2006. He is disgruntled that the IAAF has sprung this on them at the last minute. None of the athletes are appealing at this very instance. He speaks of the Russians being targeted by the IAAF, with the IAAF having an agenda to take out the Russians [at all costs]. He also wonders how the IAAF didn:t bust the athletes at any point but now.
Okay, still trying to digest all this and the ramifications therein, but one question:
Since the top 3 Russian 1500 gals are now out, will they be allowed to move up their next three alternates for Beijing ... OR are they just out of luck, full stop?
There are those stating that this is a black eye on the sport, and of course to some extent it is. To me it is an encouraging sign. Many of us believe there are many out there who are doping and are getting away with it. Certain countries don't do enough significant testing to combat this.
The encouraging sign in the long run is that the testing is getting better and better and one of these days rampant cheating will go away. Perhaps when a country is embarrased like this, as I am sure the Russians are right now, they will actually spend more time ensuring they are not embarrased in the future.
LOL. It's a whole new world now when it comes to the Good Guys it would seem. I wouldn't suggest we're ready to catch them all today, but when the cheaters are complaining it ain't fair because the tests are better then perhaps the tables are turning as to who's a step ahead.
To be fair, that could just be a rubbish translation...
Valentin Balahnichev interview (in Russian)
http://www.allsport.ru/index.php?id=16645
Well WHY are the Russians being targeted ? How the HELL can he moan when 7 athletes have just been discovered to have been tampering with urine tests ? I can't say I'm happy with the timing either, I think that stinks, but come on. The reaction from the "officials"in all of this is beginning to make me wonder a WHOLE lot more...
I agree, plus it happened before the OG start, when millions would have watched and just had an " I told you so attitude" re drugs in athletics.
It is to laff! Given the amount of bucks the Russians kicked in to buy (err, host) the '13 Worlds, if anything I'd expect the IAAF to target them for kid-glove treatment.
I believe he issued a statement to France Agence Presse and I find the French version even stronger than the translation, Cette décision détruit les espoirs de nos athlètes de participer aux Jeux Olympiques. Dashes is quite a mild translation of détruit which is more literally destroys and carries an overtone of intention on the part of IAAF.
Actually, I'd slightly disagree...I mean, it COULD mean "destroy" but can also mean "put paid to" or "write off"...which are both quite neutral. I would never have used "dashes" as a translation, though. I don't think we can read too much into that, just from that one sentence.
That is a scathing comment if true. The trainer should be much more careful with his words. This would seem to imply knowledge by the heads of the sport of a coerced effort to cheat the system by falsifying urine tests . . . "we got away with it before . . . why can't we now"
What I don't understand here is why wouldn't each athlete use clean urine taken from their own body? Or is it easy to detect that the urine is not fresh and has been stored in a freezer from when the athlete was clean?
I concur there is ambiguity in the citation. However there are so many ways to express the latter interpretation without recourse to ambiguity which is why I sense an implication therein. The point is less one of semantics of what was said as one of what was not said. I would feel rather more reassured if the Federation came out and stated it was very concerned about the allegations and expressed a zero tolerance stance towards doping and promised a thorough investigation and renewed commitment to drug free sport. That is what I would hope to hear from a Federation in the circumstances.
Again, I agree, but the problem is that you have so many factors here- did the person make the original statement in French, does he speak good enough French if he did, is it just a ropey translation of the Russian to French and then to English ? I could not say it was an intentional implication at all. But yeah, it's just semantics... Ah, I do LOVE a linguistic debate of a Thursday afternoon...
They also passed tests in 2007, meaning that the 2008 Russian Championships values differed from any other ones, not that on the surface the 2005 and 2006 seasons were years where they were doping but got away with it.
One would suspect that the Russian women will undergo a more serious physical inspection in Beijing than others, since providing a sample with somebody else's urine requires some kind of delivery system.
Maybe we're headed for a day whereby one has to pee just before the competition as well? This first sample wouldn't need to be tested, just to void the bladder of anything that might previously have been in there, whether it belonged or not.
Or you just bribe the poor local official who's job it is to test you. I guess they get paid pretty bad - and the offer from an athlete or coach to look the other way in exchange for some money might not seem a bad option?
Does the IAAF really work in a monolithic and well-coordinated manner? It would hardly surprise me if there are competing factions there... just like in most every other human organization that I've known. I think that there has been some friction between the IAAF and the ARAF over the doping issue of late, but they’ve managed to keep it fairly discreet until now. You may recall my posts regarding Lysenko and Khoroshikh (link). They waived testing of their B-samples and instead fingered the federation’s former head coach, Valery Kulichenko. The federation subsequently fired him, but the IAAF wanted a criminal prosecution, before they’d consider reducing the suspensions for the two throwers. It appears, however, that Kulichenko had enough dirt on other folks in high places that the ARAF backed off, leaving Lysenko & Khoroshikh out in the cold. Tatiana had made some very thinly veiled threats toward the federation back in the wintertime, but nothing seemed to come of it. Now I wonder if there might be a connection to today’s events.
Just looking at the impact that this would have on the 1500m over the past 3 champs alone!
1500m- world championships 2003 (taking Tatyana Tomashova & Süreyya Ayhan out who was 2nd as well) 1 (3) Hayley Tullett 2 (4) Yekaterina Rozenberg 3 (5) Jackline Maranga 2005 (taking Tatyana Tomashova & Olga Yegorova (2nd) & Yelena Soboleva (4th)) 1 (3) Bouchra Ghézielle 2 (5) Maryam Yusuf Jamal 3 (6) Natalia Rodríguez 2007 (taking out Yelena Soboleva 2nd) 1 (1) Maryam Yusuf Jamal 2 (3) Iryna Lishchynska 3 (4) Daniela Yordanova
Ghezielle has tested positve for EPo...you could remove her as well from your 2005 list
2005 Worlds
1 (5) Maryam Jamal 2 (6) Natalia Rodriguez 3 (7) Anna Jakubczak 2006 Euros 1 (3) Daniela Yordanova 2 (5) Lidia Chojecka 3 (7) Nataliya Tobias
Wow....As many of you have expressed, this is a mixed emotion time for me.
With the 3 Russians and 2 Romanians, that's 5 gone from the 1500 metres already. Will they even try or dare to replace with others? Is this just the tip of the iceberg? Sad day for our Sport, even though it's good we're catching some of them. How many of the all-time World sub 4 minute women eventually tested positive? Or is it more like how many didn't?
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.
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.
Who is onlineUsers browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest |
|