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SOBOLEVA OUT OF BEIJING
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.
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.
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